Easy Peasy Banana Cream Pie

Easy Banana Cream Pie

I teach English as a Second Language to elementary aged kids in Iowa.  I LOVE my job.  There's one student I work with, a 5th grade girl from El Salvador, that I get to work with 1:1.  During one of our discussions, I discovered that she had NEVER eaten pie.  EVER.  That bothered me.  Her birthday is today, so I took it upon myself to make her a simple and tasty banana cream pie.  It seemed like a good intro to pie, an American staple.  I told her to invite some friends to eat their lunch in my room and we had some birthday pie.  They all loved it, and I think my student will be eating more pie in the future.

This might be one of the easiest recipes I have on this blog, so enjoy the simplicity.  It doesn't happen all that often with me.

I also came up with a transport and storage method that  kept the pie safe in the over-crowded teachers' lounge refrigerator: umbrella toothpicks.  I have a ton of them from my son's birthday party from a few years ago (he's a big fan of Oriental Trading Company).  See pics at the end of this post.


Easy Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients:

• 1 frozen pie crust, pre-baked according to package instructions, and cooled completely
• 1  5.1 oz. pkg. Jell-O instant vanilla pudding
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 2 large bananas, cut into 1/4 inch slices
• 1 batch stabilized whipped cream, or 1 cup heavy cream whipped with 1/4 cup powdered sugar, or small tup of Cool Whip (only if you're not into whipping cream, though)

Instructions:
Prepare vanilla pudding according to package instructions.  Cover pudding and allow to set up 5-10 minutes in the refrigerator.  Now is a good time to cup up the bananas.

Once set, scoop and spread about 1/2 cup of the pudding into the bottom of the baked and cooled crust.  Layer banana slices snugly, but not really overlapping on top of the pudding.  Layer on another 1/2-3/4 cup of pudding.  Then layer remaining bananas.  Spread remaining pudding over bananas.

If you're using stabilized whipped cream or Cool Whip, you can spread or pipe it on now and refrigerate the pie until ready to slice and serve.  If you will be using unstabilized whipped cream, wait until just before serving to top with the whipped cream.

Makes 8 reasonable or 5 unreasonable servings.

Umbrella tooth picks keep the whipped cream beautiful. 

See?