Space exploration has always fascinated me. I hope space technology continues to evolve so one day we can travel through space just like we’ve done in video games and science fiction. For now I’ll keep my space travel to the digital world, especially in games like Starbound. The number of planets you can explore in the game continues to amaze me. Going from a lava filled planet to a blizzard ridden planet keeps the game varied. I love randomly traveling to a planet, picking a direction to walk and just exploring the surface. All the different villages and treasures makes the exploration so fun. After a long day of exploring I can take all my newly obtained goodies and make my ship look awesome.
As I looked back at the recipes I’ve done for Starbound I realized half of them have included banana as a main ingredient. I guess I’ll continue the trend and just refer to the game as Banana Bound from now on! This week we will be looking at a more complicated banana recipe, banana cream pie. There are three major components for this recipe: the crust, filling with bananas and the whipped cream topping. If you are feeling overwhelmed, you can replace several of these items with store bought items like the crust and whipped cream. Just stay calm during the cooking process and you’ll have a delicious banana cream pie to share or to keep all for yourself.
Required Equipment: stand mixer, whisk, sauce pan, 9-inch pie dish, bowls
Results: 1 pie
Ingredients:
Crust:
2 cup flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
12 tbsp butter, cubed and cold
¼ cup cold water
Filling:
2 ½ cups milk
½ vanilla bean, split open and scraped
1 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
5 tbsp cornstarch
5 egg yolks
2 tbsp butter
2 tsp vanilla extract
Whipped Cream:
2 cups heavy cream, cold
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp sugar
3-4 bananas
Begin by making the pie crust. In a bowl combine the flour, salt and sugar. Place the cubed butter in the bowl.
Using your hands, combine the butter with the dry ingredients until it resembles coarse meal. Slowly add the cold water and mix until it forms a dough. Knead the dough on the countertop for five minutes. Form a ball, wrap in plastic wrap and allow the dough to rest in the refrigerator for at least ten minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350℉. Roll out the dough and place in a baking dish. Trim any extra dough from the baking dish.
Place parchment paper over the pie crust. Fill the tray with either rice or dry beans to keep the base of the pie from rising while it cooks. Put in the oven and cook for 20 minutes or until the crust starts to brown. Set on a cooling rack and allow it to completely cool before adding your filling and whipped cream later.
Next we are going to make the filling. In a deep sauce pan over medium-high heat place the milk, vanilla bean (scraped seeds and full bean), ½ cup sugar and salt. Bring to a simmer.
In a small bowl combine the remaining sugar, cornstarch and egg yolks. Mix until everything is well combine. Once the cream mixture in the sauce pan has gotten to a simmer, remove it from the heat. Slowly introduce some of the hot mixture to the egg yolk mixture. You want to do this slowly (about a 1/2 cup at at time) and to continuously be whisking to avoid scrambling the eggs.
Do this until you’ve used half the cream mixture. Add the egg yolk and cream mixture back into the sauce pan and return to the heat. Whisk until it comes to a boil.
Allow it to boil for 1 minute and then remove it from the heat, the mixture should have thickened at the point. Whisk in the butter and vanilla extract.
Time to assemble the base of the pie. Place a third of the filling on the bottom of the pie. Next add a layer of banana.
Add another third of the filling on top of the bananas. Again add a layer of banana on top of the filling.
Pour the remaining filling on top of the banana. Make sure the banana slices are completely covered. Cover with plastic wrap and allow the pie to refrigerate for at least three hours.
When you are just about ready to serve make the whip cream. Place all the ingredients into a bowl of a stand mixer. Mix until the whipped cream forms stiff peaks.
Cover the pie with the whipped cream and serve.
