Banana Cream Pie "Dip"

 

Banana Cream Pie "Dip"

I had my lovely banana-loving friend Karen over for dinner tonight, so I had to fix her a banana dessert. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare something, so...I made banana cream pie as simply as I could. I call this a "dip," but my pie crust dippers were too thin to really stand up to it. I ended up just using a spoon, and it was fabulous. Just fabulous. Cool, sweet, creamy with a little bit of salty, buttery crust to round out the texture situation. This made a LOT of dip, so even though I sent a bit home with Karen, we will be enjoying this for a couple more days around here. Sounds like breakfast to me.

Banana Cream Pie "Dip"
Ingredients:

• 1 small box instant vanilla pudding
• 2 cups cold milk (a little less if you're using skim milk)
• 2-3 bananas
• 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1 batch of pie crust (see recipe below) or 1 sheet refrigerated pie crust

Instructions:
In a medium bowl, whisk vanilla pudding mix and cold milk for 2 minutes. Peel bananas, break in half, and then separate lengthwise the three natural sections of the banana. Cut each separated segment into 1/4 inch chunks. Fold cut bananas into prepared pudding. Pour into serving dish and place in refrigerator while you prepare the whipped cream. Whip the heavy cream with the powdered sugar into stiff peaks. Scoop and spread whipped cream onto the top of the banana pudding mix. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Pie Crust

Ingredients:

• 1 ¼ cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• ½ teaspoons salt
• 4 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons Crisco
• 3 1/2 to 4 tablespoons ice cold water
• flour for dusting

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400°F.

In a medium bowl, mix flour and salt. Cut 4 T butter into flour until it looks like coarse meal, and then cut in Crisco until well blended. Add ice cold water and stir with fork. Then use your hands to gently work the dough into a ball.  Flour a rectangular sheet of wax paper, place dough ball in the middle, flour the ball, and cover with another rectangular sheet of wax paper. Roll dough out to a thickness of about 1/8”.  With a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut dough roughly into 1.5”x 4” rectangles.

Place dough pieces on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Prick each piece a few times with a fork.  Bake at 400°F for 11-13 minutes, or until browned on the edges.   Remove from oven. Cool completely before serving with the dip.