Banana Cream Pie

This past weekend, G's family had a reunion with his aunts/uncles/cousins, and I was asked to make a couple of pies for one of the meals. What kind of pie? G said banana cream for sure. And I still had those unripe apples from our tree, so I decided to make an apple pie too. More on that tomorrow. 

Of course I wanted to make the banana pie from scratch. But what recipe to use? I narrowed it down to two very highly rated recipes. G thought I should make two banana cream because it's very popular, and originally I was going to make both recipes. But time slipped away from me and the filling of recipe #1 (Sally's Baking Addiction) ended up being more than fit in my pie crust, so I got creative. 

To make life easier, I did a graham cracker crust. The pie recipe said to wait for the pudding to cool before pouring it into the crust, but I didn't see why it had to wait, so I poured it in after cooling a few minutes. 

Beautiful. 

There was filling leftover but not quite enough to fill a whole pie. The second recipe (Preppy Kitchen) I wanted to try suggested a layer of bananas, then pudding, then more bananas, then more pudding, then whipped cream. It also suggested variations to keep the crust from getting soggy, for example a layer of jam or nutella. Hey! I still had some homemade nutella in the fridge! 

So I spread a layer of nutella on the crust, then added a layer of bananas. 

By that time, the pudding had cooled significantly and I had to spread it out in the tin. 

Not nearly as pretty. Good thing it would be covered up by whipped cream! 

I waited to put that on right before we left for the meal. I had worried the whipped cream would deflate in the wait before dessert, but the second recipe suggested using powdered sugar to make the whipped cream. Powdered sugar includes corn starch (or arrowroot powder) which stabilizes the cream and allows it to hold longer. Definitely going to remember that tip! It actually held up days later! 

So, overall thoughts on the recipe. Sally's recipe was not overly sweet. The pudding was smooth and very creamy. I really do want to try the second recipe to compare. My nutella experiment met with mixed results. I actually liked it better than the straight banana cream pie. G liked the original. He said the nutella took over the flavor completely.

The original recipe was definitely a crowd pleaser- there were only three pieces left at the end of the night. Nutella banana cream had half the pie left.