Banana cream pie - making it wholesome

(Liam's birthday banana for Dad to take to work).

Firstly, happy birthday to my wonderful super amazing husband for yesterday.
And thank you super amazing husband for requesting banana cream pie as your favourite dessert for your birthday dinner. Mmmmm.



It's been a while since I've made banana cream pie, and our diet has changed somewhat since last time I made it, so I had a try at making a wholesome version of Aaron's favourite dessert. It turned out great and most importantly, the birthday guy gave it the thumbs up.

On the subject of diet change by the way, I'm feeling that I need to go back through my archives and put disclaimers beside a lot of the recipes I posted in the past, urging people not to make them! We are mainly grain free, definitely gluten free and refined sugar free these days, and all feeling the better for it. And what I've learnt along the way is that you can make delicious food the healthy way - this banana cream pie being a prime example.

If you want to give it a go here is a 'loose' recipe (as I kind of made it up as I went along).

:: Wholesome Banana Cream Pie ::

Base:
- 1 1/2 cups ground nuts and seeds of your choice
- 1 cup dessicated coconut
- pinch of salt
- approx. 6-8 dates, soaked in a little bit of boiling water to soften
- couple Tbsp (approx.) coconut oil
- couple Tbsp (approx.) good quality butter (homemade from raw cream is best!)

Grind your nuts and seeds (I have an old coffee grinder that I use for this), I used mainly almonds and cashews and some sunflower and pumpkin seeds. Add them with the coconut, soaked dates and salt to your blender and blend untill dates are well mixed through.
Add the coconut oil and butter to the blender, adding as much as you need to form a nice soft dough.
Press into a pie dish and put it into the fridge.

Custard:
- 3 eggs
- 3 cups milk (organic raw milk if you can get it!)
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 1/4 cup (approx.) of thickener of choice (I use cornflour or arrowroot or tapioca flour)
- sweetener of choice (I use coconut sugar, xylitol, honey or maple syrup)
- 2 tbsp. (approx.) good quality butter (optional)

Pour milk into a saucepan and add eggs and whisk well. Heat on stove while stirring, until almost boiling.
Mix your thickener of choice with a little milk (I normally start with a couple of tablespoons and add more as needed - you want a nice thick custard that will set quite firm). Pour your thickener mixture into your saucepan, while whisking so you don't get any lumps. Continue to heat till boiling, stirring as you go and adding more thickener if needed so you have a nice firm custard.
Add your vanilla essence and as much sweetener as you want until you are happy with the flavour.
Stir through approx. 2 tbsp. good quality butter, this is optional but adds a nice taste and texture to the finished custard.
Once the custard has cooled down for a while, scoop it into your pie shell and put it back into the fridge.
Once it is really cold you can add the topping.

Topping:
- 1 cup (approx.) fresh cream
- 1 large or 2 small bananas
- juice of half a lemon

Whip the cream and spread on top of your custard layer.
Slice up your bananas and toss them in the lemon juice.  Arrange the sliced bananas on top of your cream layer.
You can eat it right away now or leave it in the fridge for later - we had leftovers tonight for dessert and it was just as good as last night.