This wasn't a traditional recipe from a book. Like my buttered rum-raisin cream pie with partridgeberry glaze, it was kind of a mash-up of a few different recipes. I used a basic pie crust, a vanilla custard with a mix of milk, almond breeze and yogurt, and a maringue topping. Oh, and bananas, of course.
This will make 3 eight-inch pies!!!!Ingredients:
Pie Crust
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 tsp salt
2/3 cup of earth balance (or margerine or butter) at room temperature
4 tbsp cold water (You might need 5)
Custard
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tbsp flour
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch
4 whole eggs
4 egg yolks
4 cups milk (almond, soy, cow's, or a combination. You can even use a bit of yogurt if you don't have enough milk, like I did)
1 tbsp vanilla
4 Bananas
Meringue
8 egg whites
3/4 cup white sugar (don't use cane sugar. You, sadly, really need a refined sugar to make this smooth)
1 tsp cream of tartar
Combine the flour and salt. Use a fork to mix press and mix in the margarine or butter. The mixture should be crumbly small balls. Then add the water and stir with the fork, and then with your hands, until the dough comes together into one big ball. If it is still crumbly, add a little more water. If it's sticking to your hands, add a little more flour.
Separate the dough into two pieces. Yes two, not three. On a flour, clean counter-top take a floured rolling pin (or wine bottle, or olive oil bottle) and roll the dough out into a circle. Roll it a few times and then rotate it to roll a different direction. Start from the middle and roll to the edges, making sure when you roll just the middle to even it out that it doesn't stick to the counter. Add more flour as needed to keep it from sticking to the rolling pin and counter. Roll the dough out very thinly. If it tears try to patch it up with some excess dough, but don't worry about it looking perfect. It'll get covered with bananas and cream.
When the dough gets larger than the pie plate all around, turn a pie plate on top of it and cut out a circle about an inch larger in circumference than the plate. Tear the remaining dough away from the edges and carefully flip the dough into the pie plate. This is where it's important to not have the dough sticking to the counter top. There's only so much surgery you can do on it to fix it at this point.
Press the dough into the pie plate and flute the edges. Patch the edges as needed, so that the dough extends over the lip of the plate. By flute, I mean take a knife and dip it in flour, then press it all along the top edge of the pie plate to make it pretty (see picture above). You can skip this if you want more manly, less pretty pie. It's not like it makes it taste better. Now re-combine all the leftover dough with the ball you set aside, separate into a larger and small ball, and roll out the larger ball in the same way for the next pie crust. Poke the bottom of the pie dough with a fork so it doesn't create air pockets when you bake it.
When that's all done, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Recombine the leftover dough that was excess from what you just rolled with the smaller ball of dough to the side and roll that out the same way. You shouldn't end up with too much excess, but you can use little pieces to patch up imperfect crusts.
Bake these in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes, no more. They should be a tiny bit browned, but not crisp. If your pie crust was rolled out more thinly, it'll cook faster, so be careful.
Remove from the oven, and let cool.
While the crust is baking, make the custard. I used Alice Medrich's Basic Vanilla Custard recipe from Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts
Combine the sugar, flour, and cornstarch in a large bowl. Add all the eggs and yolks and beat them for 1-2 minutes. They should be thick and almost white.Scald the milk in a medium saucepan (until the edges just start to bubble a little. It shouldn't boil) and pour it slowly over the egg mixture in a thin stream like olive oil, whisking constantly until all the milk is added. I kept beating with the handheld mixer here because I didn't have enough hands to whisk and pour at the same time. I foresaw the eggs tumbling to the floor that way (you can put a kitchen towel under the bowl to help keep it from moving around of its own accord). The liquid ended up a bit frothy, though, so you kind of need to beat the froth down into the liquid afterward, or you'll have a hard time telling when the mixture has thickened in the next step.
Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, reaching all over the bottom and sides of pan, until the mixture thickens a lot. When you think it's had enough, keep cooking and whisking an extra 30-45 seconds. Then scrape your custard into a clean bowl and whisk in the vanilla. Cool. Cover. Refrigerate.
Somewhere in this cream-cooking you probably took the pie crust out of the oven and placed them somewhere to cool. They're probably ready to had bananas added to them now. If they're not quite cool it's not a big deal. You just don't want them hot.
Slice the bananas thinly and place them evenly in the bottom of the cool pie crusts. They should cover the bottom completely, and you can even line the up the sides if you have extra. I try to cut them very thinly so I can cover the entire bottom of the pie and not have gaps, which equal sad, banana-less mouthfuls.
Now my favourite part. Pour the custard evenly over the three pies. At this point you could call it quits, or garnish with a bit of fresh fruit, like a few pieces of sliced strawberries or some blueberries, or you can make it into a really cool, mile-high meringue pie.
The great thing about this meringue is that it won't collapse if you mess it up a little, like it would for a soufflé or a meringue cookie. So go ahead and make an educated on those "stiff peaks"
Reheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit if you turned it off.
Beat the egg whites on medium (just the egg whites) until foamy. Add the cream of tartar and continue beating until "soft peaks" form. Think pillows and waves. Add the sugar in a slow stream, turn the speed to high, and continue to whip until stiff peaks form.I waited and waited on this one, because I think I always under-whip. You don't want the peaks to be "dry" but I'm not sure what this means either, so I beat for about 3 minutes on high. It felt like a meringue-wrecking eternity.
Then carefully scoop the fluff onto the top of the three cream pies. Spread it out with a spatula and try to do something decorate with the top if it kind of came out flat. Little peaks in the meringue coating will give it a nice brown and white topping where some of the meringue will be closer to the heat source. I tried swirling the top like the Joy of Baking told me to do after I had pressed down on the meringue to remove any air bubbles and completely cover the cream filling, but it just didn't want to swirl. I figured it was most important to cover the ridged edges a little so they didn't burn. Really, I didn't need to flute them at all since I wanted to hide them in shame by the end.
Set the meringued pies in the preheated oven and cook no more than 10 minutes, until the top is a little browned. It should still have some white spots, and not look too dark, but it's your call, and it's your pie. Mine were getting sold, so they had to look almost pretty. I think "almost" was the key word...
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