A big thank you to Amy of Sing for Your Supper who picked Dorie's Banana Cream Pie as our treat of the week for TWD. I would not consider myself one to enjoy banana cream pie but I loved this recipe, it has converted me. I think that's a first for TWD recipes, going into one I didn't think I'd enjoy but ended up really loving it. The first thing that worried me were the eggs, I'm not a fan of egg custards, but went ahead and tried it anyway. I halved the recipe and made 6 baby pies in a jumbo muffin tin (Baker's Secret 6 Cup Texas Muffin Pan) using my own crust recipe. I've tried Dorie's pie crust twice for TWD and while it's fine, it isn't my favorite pie crust and both times it was a little too fussy for me while rolling.
For the filling my only real change was to use skim milk instead of whole milk (from the photo you can also see that I didn't put the brown sugar through a sieve, it was the first scoop from a fresh bag so not really necessary). I love the subtle cinnamon and nutmeg flavors in the filling, giving it a warm creaminess that I wasn't expecting.
I also wasn't too sure how I'd like the bananas in these, I like bananas in just about everything but the last time I was served a slice of banana cream pie it had really brown slippery bananas sliding out as I tried to eat it, not a pretty picture. Good thing these were cute! And you know what, having them as individual pies works so much better if you are not planning to serve the whole pie at once, that was you can cut a fresh banana for the filling and put the topping on freshly for each pie as needed.
We all loved this pie, how could you not? I would never imagine banana cream pie as something I would crave or want to make but I can see making this again for sure. I was thinking these would be great to serve at a summer cook-out, fresh from the fridge, nice and cool and creamy. It's always so fun to find a dish or dessert that you actually like when you thought for a long time you really didn't.
I don't suppose I'll be ordering a slice of banana cream pie at a restaurant, or picking it out of a line up at a family dinner though -- just because I think this must be one of the best banana cream pies out there, and I would be surely disappointed after having this delicious version. Thanks Amy and Dorie, for changing my mind about banana cream pies :)
