Banana Cream Pie

Time to make something new. Since I was pretty worn out from the espresso truffles I wanted to make something relatively easy, like a pie or cookies or something. I asked James what he wanted, but he didn't have something right offhand, so I kinda let my mind wander. Last week we'd gotten a bunch of bananas, and we still had 3 left, so I thought, "Banana cream pie!" Everyone loves banana cream pie, right? I asked my boy and he said that sounded good, so I started perusing the internet for some tasty recipes. I found one that was pretty highly rated, and had everything made from scratch: crust, pudding, creamy bit and candied topping! I was pretty excited to try it, and with a tag like "he modestly decreed it was the best banana cream pie ever" I just couldn't pass it up!

PS--Sorry, but because this was a pretty involved undertaking I sorta didn't take a lot of pics. Sorry! :(

Because there were 4 different processes (crust, pudding, candied nuts, creamy bananas), I took different pictures of the different ingredient sets for each. First, I made the crust. Usually I make a butter tart crust for my pies, but this one had a special walnut crust I wanted to try:

Pretty simple: mince nuts, mix with dry ingredients, cut in cold cubed butter, add egg. Refrigerate. Nothing new, obviously. I chilled it and then put in a pie dish and baked. Here is the crispy result:

Next I made the pudding. If you're doing this from scratch, you're going to use a lot of egg yolks, which apparently they don't sell at the store (although they do egg whites...what the hell?). So if you're going to do this, you need to figure out what you're going to do with your whites. You can keep 'em or dump 'em, but be aware that you're going to have a lot left over. Here is the preparation for my pudding:

As you can see, I used both heavy cream and skim milk. This is because the recipe called for 2 cups whole milk, which we don't drink...and you can't buy milk in smaller than 1/2 gallon. At least at the store we go to you can't. So I figured I could recreate it by doing half cream, half skim milk. I mean, essentially they're all milk but with different levels of fat in them, with cream obviously having the highest amount. By mixing a high fat and low fat product I got a medium fat one: whole milk!

First you heat everything but the eggs and butter in a saucepan. One thing you need to do to the eggs before you add them to the hot mix is to temper them...aka bring them to the temperature of the hot mixture slowly. To do this you take small spoonfuls of the hot mixture and slowly add them to the eggs, stirring constantly. After about 5 or so your eggs should be fine. Then you can add them to the pudding and bring it to a boil. You're looking for big bubbles that "pop" on the surface, almost violently, at which point you add the butter. NOTE: you can't really leave this alone. You have to stir pretty much constantly until you get that nice custardy texture, and you have to maintain medium heat the whole time or you'll burn either the milk or the eggs. Here's a picture of when the bubbles were popping on the surface:

As I was heating this I was really confused as to why it wasn't thickening. I'd done everything right as far as heating and whisking and tempering was concerned....hm. THEN I went back to the other counter to check to see if I'd forgotten anything. Sitting there was the box of cornstarch, unopened. *sigh* I added it in after the mixture was already boiling, which did instantly create the pudding texture I was looking for, but because it didn't have as much time to dissolve slowly it made the pudding look grainy. This doesn't do anything really except perhaps make your end result pudding have little chunks of chewy cornstarch in them. No worries if you do this! Besides, there's a way to remedy this after it's cooled--you just mix it really hard after it's set. Here's a pic of the pudding after added cornstarch:

See? A little grainy. Ah well.

Crust done, pudding done....or at least setting in the fridge. Now it was time to candy some walnuts! For this I used a pretty simple concoction, minus the whisky (not that I didn't want it, but we didn't have any):

Just coat and bake a bit. Really self-explanatory.

Finally, the last bit: creamy bananas! Since I didn't take a picture I'll simply explain: I just cut the bananas in half short-ways, then sliced long-ways into four pieces or so. This means you end up with 8 thin slices per banana. Simply toss in sour cream, layer in the pie with the pudding and top with your candied walnuts! Delicious!