Chocolate Banana Cream Pie

Recently I had both a craving for chocolate banana cream pie, and some extra time at home. Wow, rarely do my food cravings actually match up with the time I have available to cook! I made the crust based on the recipe I found at  This Rawsome Vegan Life, but I made the filling using some banana pudding I had in the pantry. (Yes, I've written about getting rid of processed foods in our diet, but it was there and the husband hates coconut so I would have had to adapt the vegan recipe and I didn't have that much extra time for the kitchen. That's my story anyway.)

The recipe for the crust is at the link above, so I won't repeat it here. I did take some decent process photos though, so here we go...

The crust is made of nuts, dates and dried cranberries pulsed in the food processor, then smooshed into place in the pie pan.

 pretty mise en place

 in the food processor, about to be chopped up

For the filling, I used a packet of Jello banana pudding, and added in some chocolate chips. Here it is all melty and gooey:

The pudding gets poured into the crust on top of some sliced banana:

And then whipped cream on top!

I really liked the vegan crust, so I may try her full recipe sometime when I have people other than my coconut-hating husband to feed this to. But I'm also perfectly happy pairing this nut crust with other pies...maybe crushed pecans with an apple pie? Endless possibilities here!

***

Linked up to Frugal Days, Sustainable Ways