Banana Cream Pie

By request - here is the banana cream pie that was on the cover of the PET cookbook I wrote about last week. Yummmmm!

1. Press in bottom and on sides of 9-inch pie pan a mixture of:  1 cup fine graham cracker crumbs, 1/4 cup melted butter or margarine.
2. Chill until needed.
3. Chill in ice tray until almost frozen around the edges:  1/2 cup PET evaporated milk.
4. While milk chills, soften in a 1 1/2 quart bowl:  1 1/2 tsp. unflavored gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water.
5. Add to softened gelatin and stir until dissolved:  1/2 cup boiling water.
6. Stir into the dissolved gelatin and let stand until needed:  1 cup PET Evaporated Milk.
7. Put ice-cold milk into a cold 1-quart bowl.  Whip with cold rotary beater by hand, or with electric beater at high speed, until stiff.  Keep chilled.
8. Add to gelatin mixture and beat with rotary beater 1 minute, or until well mixed:  1 pkg. vanilla instant pudding.
9. Fold whipped milk into pudding.
10. Slice over bottom of crumb crust:  1 ripe banana.
11. Pour pudding mixture over banana slices. Chill until firm and ready to serve.  At serving time, garnish with a ring of banana slices, if desired.

What are you reading?  I read the latest Katie Fforde on the plane home from ALA, and read the wonderful Grace Under Pressure by Julie Hyzy on the way to ALA. Katie Fforde is a fun lovely British women's fiction writer that always makes me feel good. And Julie's book may be her best yet, and that is saying something. Pick up one or both of these authors soon!