Pie Are Squared: Susan Howell's Banana Coconut Pie

I didn't mention in my previous post that the recipe book I chose has a subtitle: An uncommon collection of womanish observations, with pie. The author of the book collected the recipes from friends and family members, along with recording their stories and memories. Hence, we get a nice taste of Saginaw, Michigan, life in addition to the nice taste of pie. So I'd like to add an excerpt from these womanly observations in each post, if I can:

"My good friend Susan tells me that she cooks every meal as though that particular meal will be the one her boyfriend, Edward, will always remember her for. She says it picks her up when Edward, who's normally not much of an eater asks, "Got any more of that?" Susan says she relishes the compliments she receives for her cooking skills, the way some women like to hear how good they look in their hair and makeup....For some women, cooking for a man is more than just a matter of throwing something together ans saying, 'eat this'; it's about tailoring what they cook to please his palate. It's about pouring a measure of themselves into what they cook--ultimately offering him servings of love and passion on his supper plate.
When you put that kind of ardor into your cooking, it's no more than right to expect the man you're cooking for to show a little appreciation."

The nice things about these observations is that, just when the feminist part of me is ready to discount what she's saying for being too June Cleaver, it comes back with a nice little comment to even things out a bit. If that makes sense. Anyway, on with the pie.

My reason for choosing this pie for my first pie experience was simple: I already had all the ingredients. Because of this pragmatic, if unexciting, thought process, I fully expected this pie to be just okay. The ingredients were simple and few. Banana is not a glamorous ingredient. But the results were super yummy. This is not a cream pie, as you'd typically expect a banana and/or coconut pie to be. It is a custard pie, baked and golden.
But the first obstacle was the crust. I have never made a pie crust I felt I could be proud of.

Until now.

While most other pie crust recipes I've seen call for water to bind the other ingredients together, this one calls for cream. Yummy cream. Also, instead of just using Crisco, I used butter straight from the fridge. The instructions also said to add only enough cream to make it start to stick, erring on the side of dryness. I really thought my crust was too dry, but I decided to trust Ms. Pinner, and she proved trustworthy. Finally, you refrigerate the ball of crust dough for at least 30 minutes.

Then, the rolling. I worried about the rolling, since I have encountered problems here in the past. But with the dry ball of dough and a spice shaker full of flour, I was able to conquer the rolling. Swish.

Then I came up against a problem: I had been following the instructions for a 9-inch pie so closely, I failed to realize that my pie plate is 10 inches. So there was not enough for pretty fluting. Boo. I'll know better next time.

On to the filling: cream butter and sugar.

Add banana, egg, milk, and coconut. Pour into shell.

Bake coconut.

Remove from oven.

Put it all together. Enjoy.
Have your husband use the leftover crust pieces to make a little ginger pear tart.


Ratings:

Flavor: 9-Even though it was cooked, it still tasted like fresh banana! It seriously was better than I expected.

Execution: 7-the crust tasted good and was a good texture, but I measured wrong, so it suffered aesthetically.

Difficulty: Very easy

Overall rating: **** 4 out of 5 stars.