Pie-a-Day # 54 Rose’s Banana Cream Pie

Banana Cream Pie

Rose Levy Beranbaum, she of the Pie and Pastry Bible (and her latest Rose’s Heavenly Cakes).

So the night before the interview I made all the elements.

First, the crust, I choose her cookie crust which was very delicious raw. Kind of like a sugar cookie dough, gritty with sugar and a bit sticky so I had to roll it out between two pieces of plastic wrap. Then I bowed to the task of making the cream. Since Rose is the queen of extremely precise measurement I sublimated my chaotic nature and measured everything exactly. The cream came out perfectly. I did a dance around the kitchen. My pals wanted to eat it all out of the bowl. After all, if you don’t put it in a crust it’s basically stiff pudding. I have to say that I made the recipe twice. I wanted a really deep layer of cream beneath the whipping cream and I wanted to be sure I really was capable of making it again.

So I woke up the next morning and took the already baked crust and set it on the counter. I had found perfect little finger bananas so I peeled them and cut them up into one inch pieces and tossed them in a bowl with a squeeze of both orange and lime juice to keep them from turning brown. I then drained off the excess juice and folded the bananas into the prepared vanilla pastry cream. Actually it turns out that I didn’t need the double recipe. I plopped the banana cream mixture into the crust and evened it out with a plastic spatula. I then whipped some cream with powdered sugar and honey to stabilize it, put it into a pastry bag, put the pastry bag of cream into a zip lock bag and took at all to KCRW. It was beautiful and delicious and I felt like a very competent person when I interviewed RLB. Yeah! Now I’m thinking of turning the extra filling into a pineapple chiffon pie.

RLB’s Banana Cream Pie