A-Peeling Pastry

Making banana cream pie. 

The cooler temps of fall always bring with them the desire to dine on comfort foods, savory and sweet alike. Autumn’s rich palette seems to incite cravings held at bay through the stifling heat of summer, and our ancestral urges to gorge are kicked into high gear. And gorge we will, on delights such as this banana cream pie, a tasty alternative to the usual apple pie of autumn.

Ingredients
Pastry cream
3 oz sugar
1.5 L milk
1” vanilla bean
3 oz yolks
2 eggs per pastry
1.5 oz corn starch
3 oz sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 oz butter

Salted honey caramel sauce
4 oz honey
2 oz glucose
4 oz sugar
1 cup heavy cream
pinch of salt

Assembly
2 sheets puff pastry
3 cups heavy cream
2 nine-inch pie tins

Directions
Pastry cream
Slice vanilla bean lengthwise and scrap contents into sauce pot. Add milk and sugar and heat to a simmer. In a separate bowl, first whisk together corn starch and sugar. Whisk eggs into dry ingredients. Gradually whisk hot liquid into egg mixture and return to sauce pot. Cook over stove, stirring constantly with a whisk. It will thicken quickly, leaving track marks. Remove immediately and pass through a fine sieve. Place butter on top and cool for five minutes. Then fully whisk in butter and chill.

Salted honey caramel sauce
Place honey, glucose, and sugar in clean sauce pot and bring to a simmer. Add a pinch of salt and heavy cream and cook on high until golden brown in color. Cool in stainless steel bowl.

Assembly
Spray interior of one pie tin and exterior of other pie tin. Place one tin upside down on top of puff pastry. Cut a circle one inch larger than pie tin. Place puff pastry between pie tins upside-down and bake until golden brown, approximately 20 minutes.

To assemble, slice bananas, mix with pastry cream, and place in pie shell. Whip heavy cream, adding sugar as mixing. Spoon whipped cream on top and finish with caramel sauce.

Meg Romano owned Salted Caramel in Bozeman with her husband Joe.