Earl's Birthday Banana Cream Pie

Earl is my super-awesome father-in-law, and his birthday was April 10. I offered to make him a pie for his birthday, but his sister-in-law had already baked him a cake, so we were forced to continue the celebration today! I started my Banana Cream Pie adventure last night at about 8:30...pretty late to start making pastry cream (I thought), but it went together like a dream!

First, I got all my ingredients together and ready to go:

After I boiled my milk, I poured it into the rest of the ingredients for pastry cream and whisked away:

Everyone said that the pastry cream would thicken up really quick, and they weren't kidding! It smelled divine...almost like Christmas, which was kind of weird since it's April and 70-some degrees outside, but divine nonetheless. This pastry cream process (plus making my pie dough) left me with a huge mess to clean up at about 9pm, but I got it done.

This morning, I rolled out my pie dough, let it chill for a bit, then baked it off so it would be ready for pie assembly:

Isn't it pretty? I was pretty impressed. I am now a convert to using Dorie's pie crust. And this pie crust has even gotten shortening reinstated at my mother-in-law's house. Earl told her she could buy some, as long as she uses it to make pie crust. (It's only 2 1/2 tablespoons, after all. But I didn't tell them how much butter. And yes, Earl, it's REAL butter. Land O'Lakes Butter...because it was on sale!)

Right before heading over to Earl and Shirley's house this afternoon, I made the whipped cream topping and assembled the pie. Didn't it turn out nice?Earl was ready to dig in! (See the big red scrape on the side of his cheek? Shirley ran him into a hedgeapple tree while they were out on the 4-wheeler. His side of the story: We were in a wide-open field, then all of a sudden she runs me into a hedgeapple tree! Her side of the story: He should have been more alert! At any rate, it's a little funny. He prefers to be addressed as "Scarface" now, rather than Earl.)

Here's David's big '0l slice of the pie:

The four of us really put the hurt on the banana cream pie this afternoon, but we needed our strength to go pick up limbs that were down all over the farm. As Earl says, "Picking up limbs is BORING."

I think I'm pretty much caught up with the Tuesday's With Dorie group now. This was the pie I was supposed to make when I made the Devil's Food White-Out cake for my Mom instead. For the recipe, you can go to Amy's blog: Sing For Your Supper. I still owe Earl my recipe for chicken salad...I'll get that up tomorrow!