It's nice when you can try something brand new, never done before, screw it up, and still have something worth sharing that your dearest friends appreciate. I had that experience today. I tried a recipe I have never attempted before. It didn't turn out as I expected, but not a soul complained.
I don't typically keep a lot of bananas around the house. We never eat all of them before they go bad. I sometimes have the motivation to make banana bread out of them, but after a while, I get really tired of banana bread. I almost never eat all of it that I make, when I don't just give up and throw brown bananas into the compost bin. I had two bananas left over from a bunch we bought the last time I went up to the mountain, and then yesterday the Mr brought in another four from the truck, from Sunday when I didn't go with the guys on a workday up there. That was way too many to deal with in bread form. It was time to learn how to make banana cream pie.
I went poking through Pinterest, like you do, to find a classic recipe. I thought I would be looking for one I could top with a meringue, and I'm not sure why. Maybe I imagined my grandmother used to make them that way, but maybe I'm mixing up her banana cake frosted with marshmallow cream, and the coconut cream pies from Bob's Barbecue in Ada when I was a kid. Everything I found used whipped cream as a topping, and it was so much less effort, especially when I already had a can of ReddiWhip with exactly enough cream in it to cover the finished product.
Crust was a trick. Pinterest suggested a decent gluten free substitute for a graham cracker crust would be rice Chex. Okay, I thought, how about chocolate flavored ones? I don't think I ground them finely enough, nor did I use enough butter to hold it together. It was a disaster, structurally speaking. Flavor was... meh. Next time, classic pre-baked crust, with my usual flour substitutes.
The filling is one of those custards made with sweetened condensed milk, cornstarch, and egg yolks (plus a couple other things). The instructions were vague: "Cook until thick." I didn't know how high the heat should be. I stirred constantly, whether that was right or not. When the bamboo scraper I used kept collecting a glob of custard on the bottom, and it started thickening to the stirred texture of tapioca, I thought it was probably close. Little did I know it wasn't. I put in the final ingredients, and poured it over sliced bananas in the chilled crust.
I put it in the fridge mid-afternoon, and then kept cleaning before D&D night. It seemed to have set up by the time I pulled it out at 8 tonight. As soon as I stuck a knife in it, I knew there was no way it was right. I served everyone a mound of banana pudding, and gave them each a spoon. For all that it looked awful, there was not a single complaint. Every person at the table gave me compliments, as they ate every bit they could scrape off the plates. I'm so glad I tried this recipe, and I'm glad to have recognized where the mistakes occurred. But best of all, I'm glad I had friends who couldn't care less whether it was pretty, as long as it tasted exactly like it did, and was handed to them each with the best of intentions.
No comments:
Post a Comment