Friday Pie-Day: Banana Cream Pie

Another pie! 

Our family has a slight obsession with bananas. We see them as portable, self-contained, sweet bundles of perfectly-textured goodness. We buy them by the bushel because they go so fast in our house. In fact, our love of bananas is probably only surpassed by our love of peanuts. Really, we just love our food. This, for instance, is how many bananas are in our house right now.

But that’s not the point of this post. I intend to share how we made a banana cream pie in January 2011. Here are the ingredients we used (those things cropped out on the right were milk and whipped cream).

We always have banana halves lying around our kitchen, and it annoys me a little. Why not just eat the whole thing? I have a weird preference for broken over sliced bananas… the texture is so different when you break it with your fingers versus cutting with a knife! I did, however, eat the slices on and in this pie.

We also used this trick to keep the bananas from oxidizing (turning brown) – we doused our banana slices in lemon juice! That’s my lovely sister Anissa doing the honors; this was only a few days before she left for a semester in Italy!

Next we added our milk to a mixing bowl, then beat in our pudding mixes. The original recipe just called for 2 vanilla pudding mixes, but we used one French vanilla and one banana, and we could definitely taste them!

Gently fold in the whipped topping and banana slices now, and admire their beauty… and the glorious smell!

This is what it looked like soon before we put it in the pie! We just used a graham cracker crust – easy peasy. Don’t worry – I will soon be addressing making one’s own pie crust!

We refrigerated the pie overnight, and it was still a little soupy. Next time we might try freezing it toward the end for a few hours to firm it up a bit more. But next comes the fun part: decorating! 

After only using a half cup of whipped topping inside the pie, the rest of the tub gets to be spread on top. Then, you can garnish the top with more banana slices, which can be arranged in any way your heart desires. We just spread them all over.

Although this wasn’t our favorite pie to date, we definitely enjoyed it. It was creamy, flavorful, and very easy to make.

Banana Cream Pie (adapted from All Recipes)

1 (9 inch) graham cracker pie crust

3 bananas

2½ cups cold milk

1 (3.5 oz.) package instant French vanilla pudding mix

1 (3.5 oz.) package instant banana pudding mix

2 cups frozen whipped topping, thawed

1. Slice 2 of the bananas and dip slices in lemon juice.
2. Pour cold milk into medium bowl. Add pudding mixes and beat until thoroughly combined. Fold in ½ cup of the whipped topping and the prepared banana slices. Pour into pie crust.
3. Chill at least 3 hours (we recommend overnight) before serving. Garnish with remaining whipped topping and slices of the remaining banana.
4. Enjoy! :)