Easy vegan Banana Pie

This week, while cleaning out the garage on a calm and sunny day, I was excited to watch the unearthing of a spring-form cake tin and a cupcake tray. Of course this lead to the start of researching vegan banana cream pie recipes, as I wanted to make something different from the last chocolaty dessert, and something light for the weather. Unfortunately, the only element of banana cream pie which is vegan is banana, with the toffee sauce, pudding filling, and cream all requiring replacements. Pinterest offered many solutions to this, however I struggled to find any realistic options containing fewer than 20 ingredients I would be able to find at any supermarket. I eventually settled on a recipe which seemed fairly straight forward...only to get to the supermarket and to be virtually unable to find anything from my list. Instead of simply waiting until I could go into town to the bigger supermarkets, of course I just bought a bunch of random stuff in a slight hungry desperation - this was the first issue I encountered with this dessert. 

The second issue with this dessert was that after retrieving the fancy spring-form cake tin, I realised that it would create a cake big enough to give to most of the guests currently at the hostel. Instead of doing this, or making one giant but really flat pie, I opted to return to the loaf tin I used for my previous dessert. 

So, heres what I bought, and what I did with it.

- 1 bunch of bananas

- 2 300g packets of oat biscuits (although I used less than one)

- vegan margarine 

- 1 packet of vanilla flavoured pudding powder

- 200g dark chocolate

- packet of 3 250ml cartons of banana flavoured soy milk

random purchases

1) I crushed one packet of biscuits before realising 300g was far too much, so removed about half, and mixed the remainder with roughly 100g melted margarine before pressing into the loaf tin. Lining the tin with baking paper was another mistake, this is not wise when using a damp filling as it soaks up the liquid making it incredibly difficult to remove later - it would probably have been easier to just grease the inside of the tin.

base

2) I chopped 3 (child-sized) bananas and placed them on top of the base, before putting it in the refrigerator. 

bananaaasss

3) I made my 3rd (and largest) mistake when preparing the filling. Feeling like a genius for replacing the suggested regular milk with a banana flavoured vegan substitute, I failed to read the instructions properly and read that there was a 6 tablespoons of powder to 500ml liquid ratio required, so I happily made my mixture with 9 tablespoons of powder and 750ml of soy milk...before realising that you were supposed to dissolve the whole packet of powder in 500ml of liquid, 6 tablespoons at a time. Once I spotted my mistake it was too late to really do anything about it, so I added the rest of the box of the powder, and warmed on the stove top for the required 2 minutes, only just letting it get to boiling point before pouring it over the bananas onto the base.

oops

4) I should have then frozen the pie for 2 hours, before moving to the fridge. Sadly, I became distracted/forgot I had made it and did not do this, so my cake remained in the freezer for several hours becoming totally solid before I remembered it and moved it to the fridge to defrost for a while.

that poor baking paper

5) Once it had reached optimum consistency (taking into consideration the mistake with the ratios), I melted chocolate (can use as much or as little as you want here really!) and drizzled it over the top, once the chocolate solidified it was ready to serve!

cut in 2 to aid removal of the baking paper

Considering I literally made this dessert up out of random stuff I saw in the supermarket, and I was convinced it would be a total failure at at least 3 separate times, it actually tasted pretty good (after it had defrosted...). The pudding itself tasted banana-y and was nice with the fresh pieces too, and was complimented by the chocolate. The base was slightly lacking however, and if I make this again (whenever I'm next in the mood for banana pudding), aside from avoiding the mistakes I've already mentioned here I would change oat biscuits for something a little more flavoursome like ginger biscuits. 

dessert and blogging

Pleasantly surprised, and already thinking about something to potentially make in the cupcake tin, its now time for bed. Until next time!