Banana Cream Pie

I love bananas, I eat almost everything with bananas, and with that, I meant REAL bananas, not banana essence. The difference between the real fruit itself and the essence is stark. I tend to cringe at the latter, yet embrace the fruit in its entirety. I don't know how many times I've flipped through Baking: from my home to yours and wanted to bake this. The recipe looked awesome and the reviews for it are fantastic. As I've never made a pie or a tart before, this seems highly challenging to me. I'm so used to cupcakes, cookies and spooned desserts but a tart? I don't even have a tart pan to start with!

After setting my eyes on making this, I headed to Phoon Huat to purchase the tart making essentials. I bought myself a 7-inch pan and along with it, a whole load of baking UNessentials. I swear the store has some magnetic powers that draws me to everything I see. And you guessed right, the trip left a big hole in my pocket. Time to make good use of all the equipment I got! I'm excited now!

I replaced the flaky crust with the sweet tart dough recipe found in the book and it was pretty foolproof. The texture was easy to press into the pan, though I made it a teeny bit too thin for my liking. I'm just glad it turned out alright and nicely-browned - not too light, not too dark. Next up, the pastry cream!

The instructions for the pastry cream was easy to follow. I love how Dorie makes her instructions so detailed and simple. It was easy to identify when the cream was done. Chilling the cream took a couple of hours, and I was pretty much left with nothing much to do except to keep myself busy with other things.

After assembling the pie, it turned out pretty alright! At least it looks like a pie, a rather decent one in fact. I especially love it when it's thoroughly chilled, so did my entire family, everyone loved it! Keeping my word to someone whom I've promised to make good use of the book, here are the results. I wish you'd tried it, you would have liked it.

This is one pie I'm pretty certain I will taste more of. Surely there will be a next time.

Banana Cream Pie

adapted from Baking from my home to yours

Ingredients:
1 cup milk
6 large egg yolks
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
3 large ripe but firm banana
1 9-inch single crust made with Sweet Tart Dough recipe, fully baked and cooled
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons icing sugar

For the full recipe, head over to Sing For Your Supper.

Yields one 9-inch pie.