Bite Size Banana Cream Pie

Bite-Size Banana Cream Pie made with instant pudding

These were made with homemade vanilla pudding.  See recipe below.

So, the staff at the school I work at decided to have a "Souper Bowl" party today, to which I decided to take my delicious Chicken Pot Pie Soup.  As usual, I overdid it on the pie crust pieces that are served with the soup.  I brought home almost a full recipe of pie crust because I had doubled it.  I ALSO happened to have some vanilla pudding in the fridge because I made Nanaimo Bars for the fourth graders I teach, and my son wanted to make pudding out of the leftover vanilla pudding powder.  Of course, I always have bananas and heavy cream in my house, so I decided to see what would happen if I put all of these items together into cute bite-sized banana cream pie.  They're actually more like two bites of banana cream pie, but they're so cute, and so yummy.  I don't know if I'll ever make them again, and the recipe is my best guess at amounts.  If nothing else, perhaps this will inspire me and others to try other bite-size versions of pies with leftover pie crust. 

*Update 3/11/12: The Bite Size Chocolate Cream Pies were a success.
*Update 4/7/12: Bite Size Coconut Cream Pies also a success.
*Update 4/30/12: Three Bite Chocolate French Silk Pies are a tie with these banana cream pie bites for my favorite of the bite size pies.

Bite Size Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients:

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

Instructions:
In a medium bowl, whisk vanilla pudding mix and cold milk for 2 minutes.  Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.  (I'm not sure how long.  Mine refrigerated overnight.)
Whip heavy cream and powdered sugar into stiff peaks.
Using either a pastry bag with an open star tip, or using a zip-top bag with  about 1/4 inch of a corner cut off, pipe about half a teaspoon of chilled pudding onto each pie crust piece.  
Place a slice of banana on top of the dab of pudding.  Then squeeze about 1 1/2 teaspoons of pudding onto each banana slice.
Refrigerate the pies while you prep the whipped cream into another pastry bag (or the same one with the tip washed), and then pipe about 1 1/2 teaspoons of whipped cream onto each pie.  Refrigerate until ready to serve.  
Makes...um...I'm not sure, but I'd guess about 3 dozen bite-size pies.
*You can also use stabilized whipped cream instead of the whipped cream and powdered sugar, if you want them to stay pretty longer.

Homemade Vanilla Pudding (I prefer the boxed stuff for this recipe, but if you're a purist, you might want to use this instead.)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup cream
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions:

Mix cornstarch, sugar and salt in a medium size saucepan.  Add milk and cream and cook over medium heat until thickened, stirring constantly.  Pour a spoonful amount of hot mixture into egg yolks; blend thoroughly.  Add about 1/3 of the milk mixture to the egg yolks, then pour back into the saucepan.  Cook another 2 or 3 minutes.  Remove from the heat and add the butter and vanilla.  Cover with plastic wrap and press plastic against the 
custard.  Refrigerate until completely chilled.

Pie Crust

Ingredients:

(Note: you can also use store-bought refrigerated pie crust)

• 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 1.5” squares.  You can also be creative and use cookie cutters to make cute shapes.

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 using for bite-size pies.

Bite Size Banana Cream Pie