apple pie with banana crust

In my last post I said that I've been looking for healthy/natural alternatives to unhealthy ingredients. For a few months now I've been replacing corn syrup with honey in recipes such as pecan pie or brittle (and in my opinion it tastes way better - especially pecan pie!) but recently I have been reading about replacements for shortening. Did you know shortening was invented for use in making soap? It's true. So I read that mashed bananas can be used as a substitute for shortening and after I made Susie's apple pie with shortening I decided to try one for myself with the banana crust. I think it would be kind of odd to try a baking experiment and then give it away as a gift, ha ha, so therefore I tried it the traditional American way first and the hippie way second. So as usual here is the pie crust recipe, only now with bananas!:

2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 cup mashed bananas (approximately 2 whole bananas)
1/2 cup water

Threw it all together, mixed it up well via the mixer. This mix was WAYYYY stickier than using shortening. This was for sure an adventure, a *challenging* adventure. Just wait until I get to the part where I was rolling it out and trying to get it into the pie dish.. Anyways this time around as I was separating the dough into two balls and ziploc-ing them to go into the fridge I floured them so that way the dough wouldn't just stick to the baggie and I'd be S.O.L. That was a good idea since I didn't know yet exactly how sticky of a situation I was getting myself into. I let that sit in the fridge for at least 2 or 3 hours.

Now this time I only peeled and sliced two apples vs three because Susie's pie was heaping and I didn't want this one to be heaping. I wound up using 5 cups of apples but the cups weren't filled to the brim of the measuring cup either. Here are the ingredients for this time around:

3/4 cup white cane sugar
3 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
 5 cups thinly sliced apples
1/2 cup caramel ice cream topping (I used Hershey's)
1/4 cup chopped pecans

Yeah, I used the corn-syrupy caramel ice cream topping again this time, so I can't claim that this pie is 100% natural and organic, but step by step I'm working my way there. I'm sure there is organic caramel at Whole Foods or somewhere but I just haven't went looking for it yet.
So after slicing the apples, I once again mixed the sugar, cornstarch and cinnamon together and then combined it with the apples until they were coated well and cinnamon-y.

Next was the hard part. I made sure to flour the rolling surface very well. I also floured my hands well while removing the dough from the bag and laying it on the surface. Once it was on the surface I floured the dough all over thoroughly and floured the rolling pin thoroughly. The dough rolled out quite easily actually. I got pretty excited.

looks like a nice, normal pie crust dough, huh?

More like attack of the killer banana pie crust! Getting the dough from the counter and into the pie dish was everything a terrible nightmare would be just short of Freddy Krueger. Seriously. No, I'm exaggerating. It was pretty annoying though. I'd say on par with trying to find parking downtown on a weekend evening.
So I fought and I fought. The dough didn't just pick up in one piece the way the shortening crust did. It was all over the place, dripping into pieces. I got it into the pie dish in sections and pieces, but each had to be majorly floured up as well as my hands because the dough was sticking to me like crazy. The shit was bananas. Literally. Here is how it all turned out looking: (speaking of Fred Krueger, it kind of resembles him)

yikes

 Next I poured the apple mixture into the crust, poured the caramel syrup over the apples and threw the pecan pieces on top just like the last time. Oh yeah, and oven preheating time. 400 degrees.

I wound up using some of the second ball of dough because so much of the first ball was sticking to everything and unusable. That left probably only 1/2 to 3/4 of the top crust dough. I had already planned to try that "fancy" zig-zag style using strips of dough you always see in magazines and other fancy baking paraphernalia. That worked out decently but I wish I had just a little extra dough than what I had. Next time I would up the amount of ingredients that way I'd be covered for the loss of that percentage of dough. So I rolled out the second ball of dough onto my intensely floured surface and cut it into strips. I had to make sure the surface was floured well enough and then I floured the top of the dough strip was well floured also so that it wouldn't stick and rip apart while lifting them. It all worked out decent I suppose, but it was a stretch - literally. Having a little more dough would have made this part easier because I do feel I was having to stretch out what I did have (and in the end when it was done baking some of the parts did unattach from the outter rim of crust). Sad slant face. I couldn't even flute the crust this time because there really wasn't enough dough present to flute. Although for a rough draft or first experiment I have to say it didn't look too awful going into the oven, or coming out for that matter. It baked at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.

about to go in

coming out

I'm sure the pie is supposed to sit and cool for like 45 minutes to an hour but I was impatient and had a slice. The center actually came out a little runny. Not sure if it's because I used less apples or if because I didn't let the pie fully cool before I dug into it. I asked Susie how the other pie turned out and she said not runny at all. So not sure there..Oh wells.

messy, messy

It was definitely more of a challenge to get the pie slice out because the crust really baked itself to the pie dish. Maybe that's because this time I used a glass pie dish and last time I used a disposable pie pan. The crust that wasn't covered by apples definitely turned out more crispy. Either way the crust turned out pretty good. I'd say delicious.

banana crust!

Overall I'd say pretty yummy. Worth the battle it took to create - at least knowing that it's better for my body in the long run vs the convenient shortening.