Banana Cream Pie

Judy made this some time ago for dessert when I was over, and it was full of all kinds of awesome/surprisingly not too sweet, so we obtained the recipe for her and bam! It’s been recreated but with a ready-made crust! I think it tasted better with the cookie crust that she made, but we were in between finals for grad school at the time, so ready-made it was. :O Convenience has its perks sometimes!

Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients:

• 4 bananas, sliced
• 1 box of banana cream pudding mix
• 1 3/4 cups heavy cream
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 tbsp butter, softened at room temperature
• lemon juice + water
• 9″ pie crust

(Whipped Cream)

• heavy cream
• 1-2 tbsp sugar
• vanilla extract (optional)
  (For the record, 1 cup of heavy cream transmutes into ~2 cups whipped cream…so be careful with that.)

Instructions:

1. Slice bananas, dip in lemon juice and lay out on paper towel. Cover with paper towel.
2. Prepare the crust. Prebake and cool in the refrigerator. Once it’s cooled, take it out and rub softened butter over it (just enough to coat it–this helps the crust to remain crispy). Discard excess butter and leave the crust out (you don’t want the butter to harden).
3. For the filling*, combine heavy cream and milk at a roughly 70:30 ratio (or 3:1–more cream makes it lighter, more milk makes it heavier). Add the banana cream pudding mix and teaspoon of sugar. Mix for 3 minutes with one of them nifty hand mixers. (I’ve never had the luxury of owning one of these, but d-damn, does it make life easier :O ).
4. Once the filling’s done, spread onto pie crust, alternating layers with the sliced bananas.
5. Top with whipped cream if you’d like. This can be achieved by…beating the hell out of some more heavy cream, but make sure you don’t overbeat it, because there’s apparently a very fine line between whipped cream and whipped butter. Go for about 5 minutes (add 1-2 tbsp of sugar if you’d like; you can also throw in some vanilla extract). When there are soft peaks, you’re good to go. Top the pie with whipped cream.
6. Cool to room temperature before slicing and chill in refrigerator for at least 2 hours or overnight before serving.
7. Enjoy this banana-y goodness. :O

*Using a super cold bowl and super cool beaters makes it fluff up better. Stick those in the freezer for a little while before you do this. It makes life easier. The teaspoon of sugar is optional, but it helps the cream to set better.