At the end of this most recent endeavor, I realized it wasn't exactly baking, but you would still look for a banana cream pie in a bakery, so it fits.
I was looking up more pies to bake (because I wanted to practice the lattice work on the top again), but found a banana cream pie recipe that I wanted to try, because I don't think I've ever had one, and I love bananas. Plus, it usually came with a graham cracker crust, and I wanted to try that since I had already done a "normal" pie crust.
I started with the graham cracker crust and wow was that easy. I guess I've learned that this stuff that sounds so difficult simply because it's so new to me, is always work taking a crack at.
I did blind bake the crust, which I think helped it harden and set, but I'm not really sure. The difficult part was molding the graham cracker crust against the pie dish, and I either didn't have enough or didn't spread it well. I couldn't get it fully up the sides without it crumbling down, but I got it up high enough to function.
The filling is just banana and a pudding, but making it from scratch was a fun project and it all went really well. I was able to get it to set every time without developing a skin. In the future, I need to remember to have the time to focus on it. A lot of things have to happen at once in different bowls under different heat, and I started it with different things coming up at work and phone calls that were hard to manage, but I was able to get it to work out.
I was nervous about spreading it over the banana layer because it was thick and the banana slices could slide around easily, but if it got really messed up, I didn't really notice.
It feels like most of this recipe is waiting, since the filling has to set for so long, and the real skill is making sure your bananas are just ripe enough to eat well in the pie, and that you have enough of them. (We eat a lot of bananas and avocados over here and yet we still can't master the ripeness schedule), and this took a solid 3 bananas, really closer to 3 1/2, but I used up all 4.
We had just bought a can of whipped cream, so I was planning on just using that to top it off. (When I'm low on calories for the day, whipped cream is an acceptable substitute to top off coffee instead of my usual flavored coffee creamer, at a fraction of the calorie count), but once again, I decided to try the recipe for homemaking whipped cream, it seemed simple enough.
...and it was! You literally just whip heavy cream until it stiffens. This one did include some vanilla extract and confectioner's sugar though.
It was so light and easy to work with, spreading it over the top was a breeze, and I realized I think I'm going to have to work on the artistic parts of baking and decorating. Wasn't sure what else to do with the whipped cream layer rather than spread it around, but that's all I did this time.
I decided to use up the rest of the banana since I had it and it would do something to the top, and then added cinnamon on the top (mainly because I forgot it over that second layer of bananas - oops)
This pie just feels like a pile of sugar, and even though I pretty much halved all the sugar measurements, it still kinda hurt my stomach in the end. It wasn't too sweet, I think it was actually a nice balance in the end, but I'm just not used to eating so much sweet stuff at once. But, it's gotten rave reviews so far, from AJ and Debbie. I made AJ take the remainder to work with him today, so we'll see how that goes, but I don't expect too much criticism from a bunch of men in construction and engineering LOL.
It was delicious, but I'm definitely going to have to work on more savory baking because all of these sweets are getting harder and harder to resist... but I do still have half of the sweet dough I made for the danish that needs to get used up ASAP.
More baking coming up...!
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