Anyway, I was obsessing about making this pie the two weeks prior to the exam, my way of finding delicious distraction from all the studying I'd been doing. So despite the test looming, I spent a little time trying this recipe that didn't use instant pudding. My first try had a great meringue, but my pudding sucked. It was delicious, but the pudding itself was too soupy. That was mainly due to my impatience. I was thinking, it had eggs, it had flour, so maybe it didn't need to be too thick when I poured the pudding over the bananas. Big mistake. This is a relatively easy dessert to make, so take the time to actually thicken the pudding into the desired consistency before pouring into the banana. On my second try a week later (the husband told me I don't wait too long to correct my mistakes), it took about 20 minutes for the pudding to thicken with constant stirring. So the pudding was great, but my meringue wasn't so great. I might have to wait a little longer for the third try, though.
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| Meringue from the first attempt |
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| Pudding from the second attempt |
So here are the tweaks I made. For some reason, I have a resistance to making my own pie crust. So I used ready made crusts for both attempts: shortbread and graham. I know, I know... I refused to make the pudding with instant mix, but I used store-bought crusts, so sue me. I find that the shortbread keeps its crunch better than the graham crust so I actually prefer it.
For the pudding, this recipe was, as the Chopped judges would have put it, cloyingly sweet. I had cut the sugar in half for the first pie, and it was still too sweet for me. So for the second pie, I only used 1/2 cup plus about 2 teaspoons of sugar for the pudding, and only about 1/8 cup for the meringue. Also, I used fat free half and half instead of whole milk, which is probably why my first attempt wouldn't thicken. So I used slightly less half and half and more flour than the recipe. Two cups of milk made too much pudding for my ready made crusts anyway. I ended up using 1 and 1/2 cups of half and half, and 1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon of flour. Make sure you bring the pudding to a boil before lowering the heat so that your pudding doesn't taste like raw flour. Finally, I squeezed a little bit of lemon juice onto the bananas to keep them from turning brown.
Even though there was still something to be desired from my second attempt, this is still a delicious and inexpensive dessert that I hope to get right someday. Heck, I finished the whole of the first soupy pie myself! Hubby couldn't bring himself to eat sweet banana soup. This is definitely a dessert that must be consumed within two days, so it's best when you're having company. Even with the lemon juice, the bananas turned brown after some time. Oh, and the pie must have cost less than $5 to make, so it would be a crowd pleaser and a money saver at the same time.
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