Vanilla Cream Pie — My First Pie in Three Years!

The first time I made a pie in May 2005, I had to borrow a food processor from Mike R. (who taught me a good chunk of what I know about baking) because at the time, I was such a cooking novice, I didn’t even own a food processor!  I made a banana cream pie with a chocolate cookie crust for my first pie, but was so busy the weekend I made it that I didn’t even get a chance to eat a slice.   

I guess that experience of putting so much time into a pie to only let it go to waste dissuaded me from making any more pies as it took three years — until 2008 — for me to make another pie.  I admit that I only made the pie because Andy really, really wanted a homemade pie.  He wanted a pie with a traditional crust, no fruit, and only plain vanilla cream.  So I searched the internet to find a good recipe, and found that most vanilla cream pies have a meringue topping so instead of just doing a cream pie, I followed the trend of putting a meringue topping on the pie.   I used the vanilla cream and meringue recipe from this site:  http://www.recipetips.com/recipe-cards/t–2100/vanilla-cream-pie.asp and used the traditional pie crust recipe from the Gourmet cookbook.  I thought the recipes for both the pie crust and pie filling were perfect, and highly recommend this as a summer treat.