Salted Caramel Banana Cream Pie
Homemade custard, fresh bananas, and rich salted caramel in a buttery pie crust. The ultimate banana cream pie!
It's all about homemade pies on Thanksgiving. This is a made-from-scratch banana cream pie with salted caramel drizzle. It is rich and creamy with a touch of sweet caramel.
We are 4 days away from the big Thanksgiving day and I am so looking forward to this week! My entire family and also great friends from our days in Texas are coming into town so it is going to be non-stop social events. Of course, I need to carve out some baking time and this pie is making its way to our Thanksgiving table.
This Salted Caramel Banana Cream Pie is ridiculously good. It starts off with an All Butter Flaky Pie Crust (recipe HERE) topped with a vanilla pastry cream made from scratch, fresh bananas, handcrafted salted caramel (feel free to substitute it straight from the jar), and sweet whipped cream.
The key to making this Salted Caramel Banana Cream Pie is the homemade pastry cream. It's such a simple base for desserts but so reminiscent of times when everything was slowly cooked and handmade. I can't leave this stuff alone! You can flavor it with either pure vanilla extract or a vanilla bean. The vanilla bean just takes it up a notch.
The salted caramel can be made from scratch or you can even grab a jar of high-quality caramel from the store to save some time. Add a little sprinkle of sea salt flakes to the caramel and you are all set!
These Pyrex scalloped pie plates are perfect for baking pies and are only around $8. My favorite wooden spoon for making custard can be found here.
Salted Caramel Banana Cream Pie
Ingredients
Pastry Cream:
- 2 cups Half-n-Half or Whole Milk (divided)
- ¾ cup Sugar (divided)
- 4 Egg Yolks
- ¼ cup Cornstarch
- 2 Tablespoons Flour
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 2 teaspoons Vanilla or 1 Vanilla Bean
- 2 Tablespoons Butter
- 3 Bananas sliced
- Fruit Fresh (sprinkle on bananas to keep from browning)
Whipped Cream:
- 1 cup Heavy Cream
- ¼ cup Powdered Sugar
- ½ cup Salted Caramel Sauce from jar or homemade
Salted Caramel:
- ¾ cup Sugar
- 2 ½ Tablespoons Water
- 3 Tablespoons Butter
- ½ cup Heavy Cream
- ½ - 1 teaspoon Sea Salt Flakes
- All Butter Flaky Pie Crust
Instructions
Pastry Cream:
- In medium saucepan, heat 1 ½ cups milk and ½ cup sugar over medium heat and bring to a boil.
- In a bowl, stir together remaining ½ cup milk, remaining ¼ cup sugar, egg yolks, flour, cornstarch, and salt. Using a whisk, stir together until completely smooth.
- Temper the egg mixture by gradually adding a small amount of hot milk mixture to the bowl, whisking constantly. Add remaining mixture until it is all combined.
- Return mixture to saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil and begins to thicken and coats the back of a spoon, about 4-7 minutes.
- As soon as the pastry cream thickens, remove from heat and add vanilla and butter.
- Let chill on top of ice bath and then tightly cover.
- Let chill in refrigerator for at least 1 hour to set up.
Pie Crust:
- Follow directions to blind bake pie crust here --All Butter Flaky Pie Crust
Salted Caramel:
- In a heavy bottomed saucepan, heat sugar and water over medium high heat, whisking constantly to dissolve sugar. Once mixture reaches a boil, stop whisking. Watch carefully as it transitions from white to light amber color. This is an important step to ensure that it doesn't burn. Once mixture reaches a medium amber color, add butter and whisk until butter is melted. If you own a candy thermometer, it usually turns the perfect amber color at approximately 250 degrees.
- Once it's melted, immediately remove pan from heat. Wait 10 seconds and then add heavy cream. Whisk well to combine until glossy and smooth.Add salt. Allow caramel to cool for several minutes and then place in jar and place in the refrigerator to cool.
Whipping Cream:
- Beat heavy cream until soft peaks form. Stir in powdered sugar.
Assemble Pie:
- Bake pie crust according to recipe.
- Cover the bottom of the prepared crust with sliced bananas and optional drizzle with ¼ cup Salted Caramel Sauce. Top with half of vanilla pastry cream and bananas (sprinkle bananas with fruit fresh to keep from browning), covering the bananas completely. Repeat layering with the remaining bananas and the remaining custard. Drizzle with caramel sauce. Cover with whipped cream. Drizzle caramel sauce on top of the cream. Chill the banana cream pie until the filling is set, about 2 hours.
Notes
Click the links below for more pie recipes:
Caramel Apple Pie
White Chocolate Macadamia Chocolate Ganache Pie
Double Chocolate Marble Pie
The BEST Pumpkin Pie
Old-Fashioned Pecan Pie
Sweet Cherry Pie
Traditional Perfect Pumpkin Pie
Caramel Banana Cream Pie
I hope you all love this Salted Caramel Banana Cream Pie as much as we do! I would love to hear what you are doing for Thanksgiving and what you will be serving! I have one more recipe to share with you tomorrow which has been a staple in our home for the last 15 years.
Happy Baking! xo
Talia
Hi Melissa,
Can you tell me if this pie can be made gluten free?
It’s essentially the pie crust flour that would be altered.
Many thanks!
Modern Honey
That's a great question! I haven't tried to make it gluten-free. I am not sure how the crust will hold up with gluten-free flour. It may need more liquid so it may be an experiment. 🙂 Good luck!
Lucinda
I made this last year and loved it! This year I noticed the 2 tablespoons of flour is listed in the ingredients of the pastry cream, but isn’t explained in the instruction portion. Are those supposed to be added at the same time as the corn starch? Thanks so much!
Talia
OMG. Can’t even. Talk about heaven on a plate, this pie is ABSOLUTELY delicious. I couldn’t fault it if I tried....
The first time around I didn’t cook the sugar for the caramel on high enough heat and it just crystallised without caramelising like the lady mentions above. I also omitted the flour in the pie cream, I think it’s an error.
CANNOT RECOMMEND HIGH ENOUGH!!!
Leah
Hi there, I just wanted to leave a comment letting you know my experience with your recipe, it tasted great but was a complete disaster. I followed the recipe to a t (and I'm not just saying that but changed or left ingredients out, no, I legit followed it). My husband requested I make a salted caramel banana cream pie for thanksgiving, so I found your recipe and set to work. The pastry cream came out great. Everything was going great until I tried making the caramel sauce. It was a complete disaster and the sugar crystallized, never turned brown. I tried two batches and then just gave up and ran to the store to use store bought stuff. The pie got made and then when we cut into it a few hours later - after Thanksgiving, oh my goodness, it was a soupy mess. We tried putting it back in the fridge, but again it came out a soupy mess. It tasted good, but the pastry cream had become super liquidy. After the fact I came back to your site to check the recipe (I seriously must have read over each step 100 times lol) and sure enough, I followed ever step as was written. So who knows. I did notice you didn't have a picture of a piece of the pie out of the crust, so I'm wondering if that has happened to you too.
Jen
The reason for a pastry cream turning runny is that it probably didn't quite get cooked long enough. There are enzymes in the egg yolks that will break down the starches as the filling sits, turning it soupy. The custard needs to reach a temperature of at least 180 degrees for these enzymes to become inactivated.
The sugar probably crystallized from stirring it while it came to a boil. The sugar should be dissolved in warm water over low heat. Once the sugar has dissolved, rinse down any sugar crystals clinging to the inside of the pan with a pastry brush dipped in warm water, then turn up the heat to medium and bring to a boil without stirring - just swirl the pan gently as needed when the sugar begins to caramelize (to help it color evenly).