A New Farmers' Market: Almost "Raw" Banana Cream Pie

You might think I'd be getting farmers' market-ed out by this point. How can I keep up my frenetic pace of purchasing fresh produce? Well, it's not like I buy a week's worth of groceries everywhere I go. I buy one or two items, and only what I need for specific recipes I have planned (plus a few whimsical purchases (yes, I call half a dozen corn a "purchase of whimsy"...). My last expedition was to the Fete Éco-Bio Paysanne out at Tohu, the home of Cirque du Soleil. I was expecting more a of a farmers' market setup with tons of fresh produce, and there was some of that, but mostly it was companies offering samples of products, everything from energy bars to soy and rice milk, to yogurt, cheese, ionic foot baths, reflexology, skin care, make-up and two raw restaurants' booths. There was a lot of variety, but I found a conversation I had with a "raw" woman the most interesting.

She started off by explaining the concept of "raw" in a very much "holier-than-thou" kind of way, discussing how bad everything else was for your body, and eating raw is the best thing in the world for absolutely everyone. She got into talking dogmatically about soaking nuts, at which point I interrupted her practiced rant to tell her about the raw banana cream pie I had just made. I told her, self-congratulatorily, that I'd soaked and dehydrated the nuts, but before researching the recipe I hadn't known that this should be done. Her response was something along the lines of, "Sorry to burst your bubble, but almost as important as soaking your nuts is the length of time for which you soak them," and certainly I hadn't soaked them properly, even though she didn't ask me for specifics. I went home and found out later (since she didn't know off-hand...) that almonds need 8-12 hours, but cashews only need 2-3. Now I wondered if soaking for too long was an issue, because I certainly hadn't under-soaked them, but this woman had berated me for my nut ineptitude. Apparently it's not really an issue for most nuts, but cashews are already processed twice so they really don't need much soaking to get them soft. Also, if they soak too long, or dry too slowly, they get a "disagreeable" taste. The soaking is supposed to remove the enzyme-inhibitors that make it harder to digest the nuts, but cashews you don't have so much to worry about because of the processing. Walnuts, brazil nuts, macademia nuts, etc. soak longer. 

Anyway, the point is that I got away from that booth fairly quickly and found my way to the Crudessence booth, my favourite raw-food restaurant in Montreal. They had samples of their "cheese"-cake that was FAR superior to both my raw orange chocolate cheesecake and this banana cream pie, which were both very good, mind you.I think it's mostly because they use a LOT of agave nectar so it's incredibly sweet.

I'll get on with it now. I got this recipe from the same raw site as my last orange chocolate cheesecake, Rawmazing, and I decided to just do one big pie instead of mini, what they call "individual tart servings", but which are much too big for that. This is a perfect dessert when you want to be full after a meal without eating a whole bunch of sugar and things that aren't "good for you". This is NOT low in fat or sugar, but it's all the healthy kinds - nothing refined, nothing saturated.

Crust:

1 1/2 cups walnuts, soaked and dehydrated

1 cup brazil nuts, soaked and dehydrated

5 fresh dates (soaked until soft. After doing some research it seems that medjool dates are the dates of choice for raw recipes. They're much bigger than the pitted dates you'll find at bulk places. I actually used fresh Iranian dates, which are smaller in size, but much juicier. They also don't have that intensely sweet cough-syrupy taste to them. Good medjools don't either, but I was eating my way through the box of fresh dates anyway AND you don't have to soak fresh ones. Les Douceurs du Marché as well as the bulk place in the Atwater market carry them, but I've seen them in P/A supermarkets and La Vieille Europe on St-Laurent. Also, who knows how long you're supposed to soak the dates for! At least there are presumably no enzyme-inhibitors in those.

The original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of coconut butter in the crust as well, but I just skipped it since the orange cheesecake recipe had the same kind of crust but didn't call for it and I'm slightly intolerant.

So you need to soak the walnuts and brazil nuts for at least 8 hours (overnight is fine) in at least twice as much water (preferably at room temperature covered in a breathable material like a clean kitchen cloth). You can also put them in the fridge, which I think doesn't work as quickly, but is safer for contamination. When you're fermenting anything (and that's basically what this is doing to the nuts) I don't trust "room temperature". In the morning drain and rinse the nuts, place them on a baking sheet (or several) and put them in your oven on the lowest heat with the door open for 12-24 hours. My brazil nuts and walnuts dehydrated well this way, but I had the cashews in a better-insulated dish, so they didn't dry out completely. This was fine, though, since I was using them right away and they were just supposed to be soaked and not dehydrated for the banana cream pie filling below. NOTE! I soaked extra cashews and the ones that didn't dehydrate completely after the soaking got moldy in my cupboard! Freezing them with a little water left in them is fine, I believe, but here's where "room temperature" comes back to haunt you. Throwing out formerly-delicious cashews is sad, but very necessary.

Pulse walnuts and brazil nuts in food processor until coarsely chopped. Add the dates dd to food processor with coconut butter (or not). Process until well blended. You might need to press down to get everything to process well, so be careful. Press into a large pie shell, reserving about 1/4 cup of the filling for garnish. I ended up with a bit too much filling, so you can either snack on it or make an extra little tart. The topping also works well on top of yogurt (very not-raw, I know, though ironically I only eat "raw" (unpasteurized and un-thermised) cheeses and probiotic (similar) yogurts anyway. The crust should be 1/4″ thick all around, but who can actually tell? Just make it as thick or thin as you want. It'll add some savoury-ness and crunch to the pie since the filling is creamy and sweet. I'll just say "crust to taste" and leave it at that.

Filling:

2 cups cashews (soaked 3-4 hours, not dehydrated, but dehydrate any extras you're not using for this recipe)

1 cup young coconut flesh (doesn't that just sound creepy? For a type of eating that doesn't eat animal life this sounds awfully meat-a-tarian. I skipped this because coconut and I don't get along, and just used an extra banana and an extra 1/4-1/2 cup of cashews. It makes the filling less creamy and rich (probably the difference between my cake and the amazing one at Crudessence) but my stomach will be happier. 

1/4 cup coconut water (from fresh coconut). Since I didn't use the coconut I just used water here.

1/4 cup coconut butter (I used 3 tablespoons of earth balance. The flavour is strong and creamy. If you're not vegan or lactose-intolerant, I very much promote using amazing cultured butter here. There's also Becel vegan, which in my opinion tastes better than earth balance (even better if you live in the US and can find the soy-free version of earth balance) but I hate supporting Unilever, the becel company. 

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1/4 cup raw honey (the recipe calls for agave, but I don't like it. Honey has a higher glycemic index, but it also has more flavour, and my unpasteurized "raw" version is delicious.

1 vanilla bean...or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract. Yeah, vanilla beans are expensive...but so is my organic, THICK vanilla extract. I really need to make my own extract. It's just vanilla pods and alcohol.

2 Bananas, sliced (I used 3 because I replaced the coconut flesh)

Your blender or food processor gets a workout. You need to clean it out (or not if you don't mind an imperfect texture in your filling) after making the crust. I processed the cashews, 1 banana and the water first. Then I added the lemon juice, honey, earth balance and one more banana. It was really hard to process this since it's very thick, so be very careful if you press down into the blender when it's turned on. If you make a lot of these desserts, invest in a good food processor or vitamix. When it's all mixed, add the last sliced banana (the first two just need to be roughly chopped so they blend, but this one should be a little more carefully sliced) and just stir. Don't blend it in. Pour the filling into the nut crust, sprinkle the top with the remaining crust, and refrigerate for 30 minutes. The pie will thicken as it cools, and the top will turn a darker shade of purple since the banana oxidizes, which is beautiful. 

The online recipe says you can drizzle with "raw" chocolate, but I didn't like the recipe since I didn't have any cacao butter and I didn't want to use anymore earth balance to replace coconut butter.

I would have been more happy with just finding some really good quality dark chocolate, melting it, and drizzling it over top. You could also melt it with a little sweetener (agave or honey) to make a bittersweet chocolate with a high percentage of cacao into a semisweet chocolate without the refined or cane sugar generally used, or add a little almond milk to turn it into milk chocolate...so many options.

Oh, and since this cake only lasts a few days in the fridge, freeze it after 2. It's even better when you eat it frozen since the banana becomes silken and smooth.

3 Banana Cream Pies

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...

Remove from the oven and let cool. Meringue only keeps for about 2 days, and should be refrigerated. So eat fast.

Banana Cream Pie for the Japanese Cultural Centre?

Every year the Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre has a bazaar. They sell all sorts of Japanese foods...and then they sell pies. People who volunteer at the centre were asked to bake for the event, so I baked. I even asked what they would like me to bake. The answer was a little unexpected:

"How about banana cream pie?" So I made 3...

Recipe to come...