Banana Cream Pie: An adventure through time.

I adapted the following recipe from The Kitchen and their Best Pie Bake Off . But I altered and made it my own as well. My future father-in-law, also known as the Unlikely Chef, has some interesting/unique food likes. He is really the first person I knew who always sought out Fish Tacos. Another thing that he loves, but that we can never find for him in the stores, is Banana Cream Pie.

We scour the state of MD every year around his birthday to try and find him this. And pretty much, unless we special order it, we never find it. I myself, had never really tried and wanted to impress everybody with a made from scratch Banana Cream Pie.

The recipe calls for just a graham cracker crust, I wanted to really enhance the whole thing. So I decided to use Nilla Wafers in addition to graham crackers. This was crucial executive decision on my part, that I’m proud to say won big time.

I also infused the whole thing with real vanilla bean rather than vanilla extract. So get ready and strap in for a Banana Cream Pie JOURNEY (*cue Don’t Stop Believing* )

Recipe

Ingredients

Crust

10 or 20 Nilla Wafers

5 or 6 Graham Crackers

1/4  Cup Walnuts

6 Tbsp. Butter (Melted)

Filling

5  tablespoons cornstarch

1/2 cup sugar

1/8 Tsp.  salt

3  cups milk

1  Egg plus 1 Egg Yolk

2  tablespoons Butter

2  teaspoons Ground Vanilla Bean (if you don’t have this, just use extract, I had a dried up bean and I used a coffee grinder to ground it up)

2  large or 3 small very ripe bananas

Method

****If you find your filling is not thickening, add more cornstarch, the recipe initially did not call for enough, I had to add more. It’ll stay kind of soupy if the corn starch ratio is off.

 

First make your crust, combine all your crust ingredients minus the butter into your food processor. And crush them up.

Now once they are all finely grounded up. Pour them into a mixing bowl, add your melted butter and combine. It should clump together. Once it’s all mixed, start pushing your crust into a pie dish. You can use a 10 inch pan dish.

Once your pie crust is all formed onto the dish, bake it in the oven at 350 for 5 minutes. After that, take it out and set aside.

Dice up your bananas and place them on your crust.

Combine your dry ingredients first and then your wet ingredients (minus the butter and vanilla). Whisk it together and pour into a saucepan, allow this to simmer. Make sure you don’t use a high heat. You don’t want to burn this. You can also use cream in lieu of milk if you want.  After about 5 minutes of stirring, add your melted butter and vanilla. Continue to stir, the pudding filling should start to thicken. If it is still too watery, add more cornstarch (just remember to dissolve it with some cold water first).

Once the filling is nice and thick, pour it over the bananas and the crust.

 

 

 

Put it in the fridge and allow it to set and firm up. When you are ready to serve about 2 hours before put your Nilla Wafers on. This will allow them to get kind of soft.