Banana Coconut Cream Pie in the Sky

Pie has become one of my favorites to bake AND DEVOUR.

The featured pie is a Banana Coconut Cream Pie.

I found the recipe here.

It all starts out with a trusty Crisco Flaky Single Pie Crust.

I used butter-flavored Crisco, which tastes pretty buttery without the Mike lactose side effects!

My Kitchenaid Mixer did all the mixing work.

I came up with a new way to roll out pie crust: between 2 sheets of plastic wrap! 

This method requires no extra flour, leaving intact the delicate balance of liquid and solid of my pie dough.

And a secret: I do not chill the pie dough before rolling it out. Don't really need to because the plastic wrap makes the dough handling 100x easier--I barely have to touch it!

Final secret: the less the dough is handled/re-shaped/re-rolled, the more flaky it remains.

All the different layers from bottom to top:

1. Crust, as above. Pre-bake in pie dish until golden ~20 min at 375 degrees

2. Sliced bananas sauteed in brown sugar and rum until they have caramelized

3. Coconut custard, thickened with egg yolks and cornstarch

4. Meringue layer, using the leftover egg whites

Notes to self: 

- would suggest to cut the amount of sugar used in this recipe maybe by 3/4 or 2/3 

- I later made a lemon custard as per this recipe using soymilk in place of coconut milk.  I used lemon and vanilla extracts to flavor. Mike ate it as a pudding, claiming utter deliciousness the whole time

Gotta love pie!