The recipe starts with mixing half a cup of sugar, five tablespoons of corn starch, and two cups of Rice Dream, in a pan over medium heat. You have to stir it constantly or you'll end up with little burnt chunks. This is basically the same process as making custard or pudding using milk. Corn starch is a great thickener. As you can see, I'm stirring with a spaghetti strainer, because my large spoon was in the dish washer.
The recipe says to keep stirring until it becomes very thick. As soon as it started to boil a little, it became thick very quickly. The color also changed, from cream colored to translucent white. It looked like it would make a fun slime recipe!
The next step is to take this mixture off the burner, and put half a pound of firm tofu in a food processor until it is smooth. I don't have a food processor, or even a normal blender. All I have is a hand blender. This blog is all about using what you have if you are not a real chef in any way. So, hand blender it was! I chopped the tofu up with a knife first to make it a little easier to blend. After blending, you pour the sugar/corn starch/Rice Dream mixture and blend it some more.
The bad news is, not only do I only have a hand blender, but the motor must be broken or something, because while it did a great job blending, it made a horrible screeching noise the whole time. It freaked my cat out so badly that she jumped off the table, knocking down a pile of papers and my Dr. Pepper. I was worried my neighbors were going to call the police, thinking that I was being brutally murdered up here. So I had to cut the blending short, resulting in a mixture that was lumpier than your usual pudding. I can never resist tasting things when I cook, so I tasted this. I was not too thrilled about the taste at this point. It reminded me of vanilla custard baby food.
The next step was the pie shell. To simplify things, I was using a Honey Maid graham cracker pie shell.
Then, you pour the custard mixture into the pie shell, right on top of the bananas.
Then I realized that the list of ingredients on the recipe had called for vanilla extract, but I had forgotten to add it. Oh well... that is life for an absent-minded chef! The final direction was to put the pie in the refrigerator and let it chill for at least two hours.
Based on the taste of the pudding I'd had, I have to admit I was not overly excited about tasting the whole pie. I figured it would taste like Rice Dream, tofu and bananas. However, I am willing to make sacrifices for the sake of this blog. So I took my finished pie out of the refrigerator It looked similar to how I left it. I cut a slice, and topped it off with some Almond Milk Reddi Whip.
Somehow in the chilling process, the tofu, Rice Dream and bananas had merged together to create the pudding they were always intended to be. It was sweet, creamy, and banana-y.
It was not my mom's banana cream pie. Like I always say, if you taste new things expecting them to taste like other things, you are often disappointed. So I did have that to contend with. But it was, on its own, a delicious dessert.
This is something I can imagine making to bring to potlucks when I want something that vegans, vegetarians, and carnivores can all enjoy together. Something that will make people say, "Wow, this is vegan? It is so good!"
The true test is when I bring the rest of the pie over to my aunt and uncle's house later today. I will update this blog entry to let you know their thoughts on it.
For now, here is the final note.
No comments:
Post a Comment