The Easiest Fourth of July Pie I’ve Ever Seen

Ingre­di­ents

• 1 pre-baked 9-inch pie crust
• Pas­try cream:
• 2 1/2 cups 1/2 & 1/2, or whole milk
• 1 tea­spoon vanilla bean paste
• 1/4 tea­spoon salt
• 2 eggs + 1 egg yolk
• 2/3 cup sugar-divided
• 4–5 table­spoons cornstarch
• 4 table­spoons butter
• 2 bananas
• Top­ping:
• 1 cup whip­ping cream
• 2 table­spoons gran­u­lated sugar
• 1 tea­spoon vanilla bean paste
• 6–8 oz raspberries
• 3–4 oz blackberries

Instruc­tions

1. In a medium sized, heavy saucepan, com­bine the 1/2 & 1/2, or milk, and 1/3 cup of the sugar.
2. In a medium sized bowl, put the eggs and egg yolk, the other 1/3 cup of sugar, the vanilla bean paste, the salt, and the corn­starch. Whisk together well and set aside.
3. Bring milk in the pan to scald­ing. Do not boil.
4. To ‘tem­per’ the egg mix­ture, slowly add small amounts of the hot milk mix­ture to the bowl of eggs while whisk­ing vig­or­ously. When you have added at least half of the hot milk, pour the egg mix­ture into the remain­ing milk in the saucepan. Cook until thick­ened, mak­ing sure you stir con­tin­u­ally. Cook at least 1 minute after the mix­ture begins to thicken.
5. Take off the heat and stir in the but­ter, then run the pas­try cream through a strainer to remove any lumps, or bits of cooked egg.
6. Put pas­try cream into a bowl, and cover with plas­tic wrap, mak­ing sure the plas­tic is touch­ing the sur­face of the pas­try cream. Tis will keep a ‘skin’ from form­ing on the cream. Set in fridge to cool.
7. Whip the whip­ping cream and the sugar until the desired con­sis­tency, adding the vanilla bean past at the end. Set aside.
8. To Assem­ble:
9. Spoon half of the the cooled pas­try cream into the baked and cooled pie crust. Then layer the sliced bananas over the pas­try cream. Spoon the remain­ing half of the pas­try cream over the bananas. Smooth the top, form­ing a slight mounded shape.
10. Start­ing in the upper left-hand quar­ter, place black­ber­ries to form the ‘field’ of the flag.
11. Then, begin­ning at the top, start plac­ing the rasp­ber­ries in a row, then alter­nat­ing with a squig­gly row of sweet­ened, whipped cream, using a pas­try bag and a star tip.Then alter­nate down with the berries and cream until the pie is covered.