Last month, my bestie got married. Surrounded by revelrie and champagne, one discovery stands out among my memories of that weekend – deep dish pies. My bestie’s new mother-in-law Kathy knows how to make pie RIGHT. She expounded some of her flaky pie crust wisdom upon me. The secret is keep everything cold. So my method of rolling out dough on the counter top while the dishwasher is running is a proven fail. She goes beyond keeping just the dough cold. She puts her food processor components in the fridge, the flour even and wears gloves while using an iced rolling pin. Respect.
For my birthday she graced me with two deep dish pie plates. First I made a simple fresh cherry pie for my birthday. Spent an hour pitting cherries and then cleaning up said pitted cherry juice. Put my food processor in the fridge, the flour in the freezer but did not buy gloves because that would require leaving my apartment and that’s not what a birthday bake-off day is about. Overall results in terms of dough were positive. Flaky and crispy. I need to try again.
I have never made a cream pie before and I can’t recall ever tasting a banana cream pie in my life but bananas are alright. There’s something Mad Men-ish about a banana cream pie, like the pineapple upside down cake. I decided to adapt a recipe from Bon Apetit using my dough recipe and their pastry cream. I didn’t have any rum but I did have some abandoned Amaretto. Then came the true moment of inspiration. Salted caramel sauce. Unsatisfied with the options available at the local grocermart, I looked around for recipes that provided enough photographic steps that I could continue life without a candy thermometer and found this. I puttered through this entire recipe, using fancy flaked salt and real vanilla bean in the pastry cream. After baking my pastry, realizing that pie weights are going to be topping my list of must-haves, I slathered a layer of salted caramel before putting down my banana slices. Repeat as necessary. I broiled some slices bananas and brown sugar in the oven in lew of a torch but I would definetly skip this next time, it was unecessary. Now this is no ordinary banana cream pie, it needs its own title, something that conjures up images of gluttony and having given up on life in general. The Banana Hammock Cream Pie.
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