The Very Best Banana Cream Pie 🥧🍌

February 25, 2020

With a fair amount of experience in bakes, cakes and pies behind me, I can say with some confidence that banana cream pie is one of the tastiest things almost anyone can bake!

It is also one of those pies with many different layers, textures and flavours, which is precisely why you will very easily surprise everyone who tries it and may even be praised as an accomplished pastry chef (just don't let on, of course, that this is your first pie, wink, wink 😉😉). Either way, banana cream pie is an absolute classic – sinfully rich in flavour, silky in texture, but also very light and comforting! A slice of this pie is an essential part of sitting down with a cup of coffee or tea, I can promise you that.☕

The Very Best Banana Cream Pie

Banana cream pie is made up of four main parts:

Shortcrust pastry.The baked pastry should be sweet and crisp, almost like a biscuit. You can use any shortcrust recipe you like; both a shortcrust pie pastry and a sweet tart pastry work. Before rolling the pastry out, don't forget to chill it for at least half an hour (it will shrink less as it bakes). And do lay foil or baking paper over the pastry once it is in the tin (so that it covers the pastry completely) and fill it with something that has weight and will stop the pastry puffing up as it bakes (uncooked rice, peas, pearl barley or similar).

The Very Best Banana Cream Pie

Bananas.The very first layer of a banana cream pie is nothing but bananas, so to get the richest possible banana flavour you must use only very ripe ones (very ripe bananas are deep yellow and covered in brown spots).

The Very Best Banana Cream Pie

Pastry cream.Although this layer looks like the hardest, making a good pastry cream is far simpler than it appears. For a good pastry cream you will want fresh farm eggs (the better the eggs, the richer the yolks, and the richer the yolks, the tastier the cream – the maths is simple). And of course, what is a pastry cream without vanilla? Both vanilla paste and the seeds from a vanilla pod work beautifully. To get a richer, fuller cream I use part full-fat milk and part cream in the recipe, but if that is too rich for you, you can replace the cream with milk.

The Very Best Banana Cream Pie

The whipped cream layer.Some banana pies have a fairly thin layer of cream, and others have none at all. Another group of banana cream pies, mine among them, are not remotely shy about the cream 😄. I always suggest going by your own taste and doing whatever you prefer. Personally, a banana cream pie would not be a banana cream pie for me if it didn't have a LOT of cream on it, because it lifts the pie's overall flavour to a completely different level. You can improvise with this layer too – grate in some chocolate, add a few drops of an essence, fold in some coconut flakes or whatever you like.

The Very Best Banana Cream Pie

This recipe is best suited to 22-24cm tins. Do chill the pie before slicing it (half a day is best). Enjoy!

The Very Best Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients

~3 bananas (very ripe)

For the shortcrust pastry

300 g flour
60 g sugar
a pinch of salt
200 g cold butter
1 egg yolk
1-4 tbsp cold water

For the pastry cream

100 g sugar
3 egg yolks
1 egg
vanilla paste
a pinch of salt
30 g cornflour
380 ml milk
100 ml cream
45 g butter

For the cream layer

~300 ml whipping cream
~30 g sugar
vanilla paste

Instructions

For the pastry

Mix the flour with the sugar and salt. Grate the cold butter or cut it into small cubes and add it to the flour mixture. Rub the butter into the flour between your fingers until the mixture looks like sand (no large lumps of butter should remain).
Add the egg yolk and a few tablespoons of cold water (adjust the amount of water to the consistency of the dough; depending on your flour, 1-2 tbsp is usually enough). Knead well.
Roll the pastry out on a floured worktop and line a 24cm round tin with it. Trim off the excess.
Cover the pastry in the tin with baking paper or foil (the paper/foil must sit flush against the base and sides, and the top edges must be covered too, or the pastry may start to burn as it bakes). Tip uncooked rice/beans/chickpeas/peas or similar onto the paper/foil so the pastry is well weighted and doesn't lose its shape while baking.
Bake in an oven preheated to 190°C for about 20 minutes (the foil should no longer stick to the pastry), then remove the foil with the rice or other pulses and bake the pastry for about 10 minutes more, until it is nicely browned and looks sufficiently dry. If you want an even drier, crisper crust, you can bake it a little longer. Cool the pastry completely.

For the pastry cream

In a bowl, mix the sugar, egg yolks, egg, vanilla paste, salt and cornflour together well.
Pour the milk and cream into a pan and heat until it is almost at boiling point (it is important that it doesn't actually boil!). Take the almost-boiling milk and cream off the heat and pour half of the liquid into the egg mixture in a slow stream. Stir constantly as you pour so the eggs don't scramble.
Pour the mixture back into the pan with the rest of the milk and cream. Stirring constantly, heat over medium heat for a few minutes until it begins to thicken. When it starts to boil, lower the heat and cook for a few minutes more (1-2 minutes should be enough; the cream should be thick enough, but if you want it thicker still you can add a little more cornflour).
Take the pan off the heat, add the butter and stir it in well. Let the cream cool a little, then cover it with cling film (the film must touch the surface of the cream so a skin doesn't form). Once the cream has reached room temperature, refrigerate it for a few hours so it settles and thickens further.

For the cream layer

Whip the well-chilled cream with the sugar and vanilla. Keep it in the fridge until you need it.

Assembly

Slice the bananas and layer them a few deep over the baked pastry case. Spread the pastry cream over the bananas and level it. Spread the whipped cream over the pastry cream. Let the pie sit in the fridge for half a day or overnight. Enjoy!