My husband craved a custard style dessert, and – well, bananas were on sale, and we were kind of cocooning because everyone was out at the stores stocking up on toilet paper and bleach to prevent Coronavirus? So I thought, what can I make? I can only bake so much banana bread and banana raisin bread pudding. So I thought, what about some banana cream pie?

My recipe for the filling, whipped cream topping and preparation is from Sally’s Baking Addiction – with modifications. (When I say modifications, that means I cheated and skipped a few steps). The pie crust is from my mom and grandma. It’s sweet, light and flaky.

Mom and Grandma’s Pie Crust INGREDIENTS

3 Cups Flour

1 Cup All Vegetable Lard

3 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar

Sprinkle Salt

6-9 Tablespoons Very Cold Water

MOM AND GRANDMA’S PIE CRUST DIRECTIONS:

This recipe is for 3 crusts – so if you are not making any other pies – divide the recipe in 3. I always make another pie when I’m baking – I make such a mess with rolling out the flour – I might as well!

(Today I used leftover chicken to make a chicken pot pie)

Mix together dry ingredients in mixing bowl. Cut lard into dry ingredients with a pastry cutter. Add 6-9 tablespoons of water a little at a time and mix together the batter as much as possible. Form pastry dough into a ball. Refrigerate for about one hour.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Spray 9″ pie plate with non-stick spray.

Sprinkle flour onto parchment lined counter or clean rolling area. Roll rolling pin in flour. Roll out pastry with rolling pin into thin sheet. Cut one 10″ circle of pastry out, and place over pie plate. Shape pastry by pressing in to pan and cut off the edges and decorate with fork edges. Don’t worry if the pie crust doesn’t look perfect -it’s going to be under all of those bananas!

Bake for 20 minutes at 425 degrees F. Turn down the oven to 350 degreesF and cook the crust for 10 more minutes until lightly browned.

Pre-baking the pie crust can sometimes result in the pie crust rising, so you can use pie weights if you like to weigh down the crust during baking – but I did not, and the crust looks just fine.

I let the crust cool for a little while – probably only half an hour while I made the custard filling.

While the pie crust is cooling – there are 3 different things to organize – like the bananas for one – but more importantly, you need to mix the cream, milk, salt and sugar in a saucepan – and then separate 4 egg yolks in a bowl that can be heated and mix with the corn starch.

Banana Custard Filling Ingredients

5 Bananas – or as many as you can fit!

1 1/2 cup Homogenized Milk

1 cup Whipping Cream (35%)

1/4 tsp Salt

1 Cup Granulated Sugar

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla

2 Tbsp Butter

4 Egg yolks

1/4 Cup Corn Starch

A sprinkle of cinnamon

Banana Custard Directions

Mix milk, cream, salt, sugar, butter and vanilla in a saucepan. (This is one place that I took a shortcut from Sally’s Baking Addiction – she adds the vanilla and butter in after the custard is all mixed together – this was just too many steps for me!)

Separate 4 Egg yolks, and mix with corn starch in a heat safe bowl. Whisk together the cream mixture and heat at medium whisking constantly. Whisk the egg yolk mixture as well. After heating the saucepan for about 3 minutes, pour a little bit of the cream mixture into the egg mixture to heat gradually. Whisk the egg mixture, and then slowly add back to the cream mixture – whisking constantly.

Turn the heat up just a little – whisking away – and presto it will thicken – take it off the heat.

Immediately sliced up 2 1/2 bananas and placed them in the cool pie shell (traditionally it should be conpletely cooled – but mine was just a little warm and that was FINE – just put a nice layer of bananas in to cover the crust – and completely breaking from tradition – whisk the custard again (it will have cooled slightly by then, but no worries) and pour it over the banana/crust – and then straight to the fridge! Traditionally you would put the custard pie in the fridge for AT LEAST 4 hours to cool before making the whipped cream topping – so you would need to cover with cellophane – but who can wait 4 hours? So after about an hour of cooling in the fridge I sliced some more bananas, arranged them over the custard and then mixed the Whipped Cream Topping.

Whipped Cream Topping Ingredients and Preparation

1 cup whipping cream (35%)

2 tbsp icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla

In a cold mixing bowl – mix cold whipping cream with icing sugar and vanilla – with electric mixer for about 4 minutes, until mixture forms stiff peaks. Apply to over the bananas and custard pie!

You could also use pre-made whipped cream, but this is so easy!

Cool the pie in the refrigerator until you are ready to eat – anytime!