Instructions

1. In a medium sized, heavy saucepan, com­bine the milk and 1/3 cup of the sugar. Bring milk in the pan to scald­ing. Do not boil.
2. Meanwhile, in another medium sized bowl, put the eggs and egg yolk, the other 1/3 cup of sugar, the vanilla bean paste, the salt, and the corn­starch. Whisk together well and set aside.
3. To ‘tem­per’ the egg mix­ture, slowly add small amounts of the hot milk mix­ture to the bowl of eggs while whisk­ing vig­or­ously. When you have added at least half of the hot milk, pour the egg mix­ture into the remain­ing milk in the saucepan. Cook until thick­ened, mak­ing sure you stir con­tin­u­ally. Cook at least 1 minute after the mix­ture begins to thicken.
4. Take off the heat and stir in the but­ter, then run the pas­try cream through a strainer to remove any lumps, or bits of cooked egg.
5. Put pas­try cream into a bowl, and cover with plas­tic wrap, mak­ing sure the plas­tic is touch­ing the sur­face of the pas­try cream. Tis will keep a ‘skin’ from form­ing on the cream. Set in fridge to cool for about 1 1/2 hours.
6. Once the pastry cream is cool, make the whipped cream. Whip the whip­ping cream and the sugar until the desired con­sis­tency, adding the vanilla bean past at the end. Set aside.
7. Spoon half of the the cooled pas­try cream into the baked and cooled pie crust. Then layer the sliced bananas over the pas­try cream. Spoon the remain­ing half of the pas­try cream over the bananas. Smooth the top, form­ing a slight mounded shape.
8. Start­ing in the upper left-hand quar­ter, place black­ber­ries to form the ‘field’ of the flag. Then, begin­ning at the top, start plac­ing the rasp­ber­ries in a row, then alter­nat­ing with a squig­gly row of sweet­ened, whipped cream, using a pas­try bag and a star tip.Then alter­nate down with the berries and cream until the pie is covered.

Recipe from Secret Life of a Chef’s Wife