Contents
Sliced banana under a vanilla pastry cream in a baked shell, with whipped cream over. It is the archetype of the American diner cream pie, and the whole family — banana, coconut, chocolate, butterscotch — is the same pastry cream with one thing changed.
Learn the pastry cream and you have all four.
What makes it work
- Pastry cream must boil, and boil while whisking. Egg yolks contain amylase, an enzyme that digests starch and would turn the filling to liquid overnight. Boiling for two full minutes destroys it. A cream pie that is soup the next morning was not boiled long enough — this is the single most useful fact in this folder.
- Strain it. Every professional pastry cream goes through a sieve.
- Press cling film onto the surface while it cools, or it skins.
- Toss the banana slices in lemon juice and bury them completely in cream. Exposed banana browns within an hour.
- Assemble the day it is served. Banana degrades the filling around it.
Ingredients
One 23 cm pie. Serves 10.
- 1 blind-baked shell — all-butter pie crust
Pastry cream:
- 600 ml whole milk
- 150 g granulated sugar
- 50 g cornstarch
- 6 egg yolks
- 4 g fine salt
- 60 g unsalted butter
- 2 tsp vanilla — see Pure vanilla extract
Assembly:
- 3 ripe but firm bananas
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 400 ml double cream
- 40 g powdered sugar
- shaved chocolate or toasted coconut, to finish
Method
Blind bake and cool the shell.
Warm the milk. Whisk the sugar, cornstarch, salt and yolks in a bowl until pale. Pour the hot milk in slowly, whisking, then return everything to the pan.
Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly and getting into the corners, until it thickens and begins to bubble. Boil two full minutes, still whisking.
Off the heat, whisk in the butter and vanilla. Strain into a bowl, press cling film onto the surface, and chill until cold, at least three hours.
Slice the bananas 5 mm thick and toss with lemon juice. Layer half in the shell, spread half the pastry cream over, then the rest of the banana, then the rest of the cream.
Whip the double cream with the powdered sugar to soft peaks, pile it on, and finish with chocolate or coconut.
Chill one hour before serving.
Notes
- Banoffee is the British relative: a biscuit base, dulce de leche, banana and cream, with no pastry cream and no baking. See alfajores for how to make the caramel.
- Keeps two days refrigerated at the outside; the bananas set the limit.
Elsewhere on the site
Method and theory: Pie and tart recipes · pies and tarts · eggs
Nearby: coconut cream pie · chocolate cream pie · french silk pie