Banana Cream Pie (grain-free & dairy-free)

Banana Cream Pie (grain-free & dairy-free)

The idea of paleo vanilla pudding has been a thorn in my proverbial side (Eugene Miltzner from Adventures in Odyssey anyone?) I’ve tried many times to use arrowroot as the thickener…and then tried tapioca starch without any luck. INSERT: if you have a recipe for vanilla pudding using arrowroot or tapioca and the texture isn’t nasty, PLEASE post it below!! That being said, I attempted last summer again to make a vanilla pudding with tapioca starch so that the end result could be Banana Cream Pie. I cooked the pudding as my mom’s recipe states using tapioca starch in place of the cornstarch…it smelled good, looked good, and even had good flavor. But when my sweet daughter attempted to eat it out of her bowl, she dipped her spoon in and when she took it out, the pudding slid right off…super-slimy. It was so nasty. I tried to eat it (I hate letting paleo experiments go to waste as the ingredients aren’t usually cheap), but the texture was awful. I can still picture Nick putting his spoon repeatedly into his dish and pulling it out with no luck getting any of the pudding to stay on his spoon. All that to say I put out a plea on Facebook for someone to share with me how to make pudding with something other than tapioca starch or arrowroot. A few of you said, “Use gelatin!!” Of course! Why didn’t I think of that? Well I didn’t…even though I use gelatin in my marshmallow recipe! So…after finally coming up with a pudding recipe that we liked the texture of…Paleo Banana Cream Pie was born.

Without further ado,

Banana Cream Pie (Grain-free, Dairy-free & Paleo-friendly)

CRUST:

1/4 cup coconut oil, melted (I love Nutiva!)
1 1/4 cups almond flour
1 Tbsp. honey
1/4 tsp. salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2.Mix all four ingredients together.
3. Press the dough evenly into a 9″ pie plate.
4. Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until just starting to brown.

PUDDING:

1 3/4 cups almond milk & 1/2 cup almond milk (divided)
1/4 cup honey
1/4 tsp. salt
3 egg yolks (save whites for meringue)
1 envelope powdered gelatin (approximately 1 Tbsp.)
1 1/2 Tbsp. coconut oil or butter
1/2 Tbsp. vanilla
2 bananas

1.  Put 1 3/4 cup of almond milk, honey, salt and egg yolks in a medium saucepan (save egg whites for the meringue) . Whisk to combine. Bring pudding mixture to boil.
2. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl sprinkle gelatin over the remaining 1/2 cup almond milk.
3. Once pudding starts to boil, whisk in the gelatin/almond milk mixture until dissolved. Cook one minute and remove from heat.
4. Add coconut oil (or butter) and vanilla and stir until melted and combined. Cool in fridge until thickened, but still able to be stirred. (Unfortunately, this process seems to take FOREVER. Be patient. I think mine took 2-4 hours to get thick. I would stir the pudding every half hour or so while it thickened.)
5. Once pudding has become thick, cut up 2 large bananas and stir into pudding. Pour pudding onto the crust–if you have more pudding than needed to fill the crust pour extra into a separate dish to enjoy later–don’t overfill the crust. It should be about level with the top of the pie plate. Return pie to fridge to continue setting up until firm.

MERINGUE:

3 egg whites (or more–the pie in the picture has 5 egg whites if I remember correctly)
pinch of salt
1 1/2 Tbsp. honey

1. Beat the egg whites with a pinch of salt. Add 1 1/2- 2 Tbsp. honey and beat until stiff peaks form.
2. Spread on top of pudding with a spatula.
3. Broil in the oven until nicely browned. (Make sure you watch it! Broiling can go from “browning” to “blackening” pretty quickly!)
4. Let cool a few minutes and devour!! 

Shared at Allergy-Free Wednesdays!

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