This banana cream pie recipe is a quick version of an old-fashioned favorite.
A flaky pie crust is filled with layers of sliced bananas, velvety vanilla custard, and crowned with whipped topping!
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As Easy As Pie
Banana cream pie is a staple in my kitchen (along with a classic apple pie). Banana cream pie can certainly be made from scratch with eggs (either just yolks or whole eggs); however, we love this version because it’s so easy and has a nice thick texture.
Crust for Banana Cream Pie
This banana cream pie recipe can be set in a traditional pastry pie crust or a no-bake graham cracker crust.
Graham Cracker Crust: A graham cookie crust doesn’t require baking. Store-bought graham crusts tend to crack as the pie is served, so I suggest making a homemade graham crust; it takes about 5 minutes. This crust can also be made with vanilla wafer crumbs.
Pastry Crust: If using a pastry crust (either homemade or frozen from the store), you will want to blind bake the pie crust (bake it empty in the pie pan).
How to Make Banana Cream Pie (shortcut recipe)
- Bake the crust and cool completely if using pastry.
- Fill the crust with sliced bananas and top with the banana cream filling.
- Chill 4 hours or overnight, decorate with whipped cream and bananas.
Quick Tips
- When blind baking pastry, poke the crust with a fork to avoid bubbles.
- If desired, this can be served in a no-bake graham crust (see notes)
- Choose vanilla pudding; it really lets the fresh bananas’ flavor shine (banana pudding can overpower the fresh flavor).
- Ensure the bananas are completely covered with the filling so they don’t brown.
To Store Cream Pies
Once the crust is finished, this banana pie recipe does not need to be baked. It tastes best when served chilled, refrigerate at least 3 to 4 hours uncovered before serving! If storing longer than 4 hours, lightly cover with plastic wrap.
- Refrigerator: You can keep it in the fridge for up to 3 days; if you keep it too long, the bananas may get a bit weepy, but it’ll still taste great!
More Banana Recipes We Love
Did your family love this Banana Cream Pie? Be sure to leave a rating and a comment below!
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 single pie crust baked and cooled
- 2 bananas plus extra for decorating
- 2 cups cold milk
- 2 boxes instant vanilla pudding mix 3.4 ounces each
- 2 cups whipped topping such as Cool Whip, thawed and divided
Instructions
For the Pastry
- If making a pastry crust, preheat the oven to 425°F.
- Roll the pie crust into a 12-inch circle. Line a 9-inch pie plate with the pastry and fold the edges under. Crimp as desired. Poke the bottom of the crust with a fork.
- Cut an 11-inch circle of parchment paper and gently place in the pie crust and fill it with dried beans or pie weights. Bake for crust 15 minutes, remove the parchment and beans/weights and then bake for an additional 12 to 15 minutes or until golden. Cool completely.
For the Filling
- Slice the bananas and arrange over cooled pie crust.
- In a medium bowl, whisk the vanilla pudding mix and cold milk until smooth. Let rest for 3 minutes to thicken. Fold in 1 cup of whipped topping.
- Spread the pudding mixture over the bananas. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight.
- Top with remaining whipped topping and decorate with banana slices and caramel or chocolate shavings if desired.
Notes
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Dessert, Pie
Cuisine American© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
For all of you who have loved and made the original from-scratch version, you can view and print the original from-scratch banana cream pie recipe here or you can print the easy banana cream pie listed above.
Mine is super runny to. I’m sticking it in the freezer to see if that can help save it. Flair is good, but recipe is disappointing.
If I would have read the comments prior to attempting this recipe, I would have used yolks only! If you haven’t started baking – try only use the yolks! Dozens of commenters have said it *could* save your pie!
If you have a runny (unsalvageable?) custard, a situation many other commenters have shared they found themselves in, I hope these two solutions help you harness your creativity! You do not have to throw away your uneaten work! You can make some delicious food with your runny blend of sugar, milk, eggs, corn starch, sat, butter, and vanilla! Here’s what we did:
1) We blended our 3 bananas, slowly adding in our runny custard, starting with 1/4 cup. Stop adding custard when you reach a consistency that will fill a crust. For us, it was between 1/2 and 3/4 cups of custard. The banana thickened the custard and we were able to use this as filling for our pie! It set in the fridge overnight. Not traditional but still tasty!
2) We had an abundance of runny custard remaining. I chopped up a baguette (any crusty loaf would probably work!), arranged it in an 8×8 glass baking dish, poured over the custard until 75% of the bread was submerged, added some banana/custard blend and chocolate chips, and baked for 20-30 minutes at 350. We kept an eye on it until the bread peaks started to brown. I was concerned the eggs would separate and scramble in the oven, they did not – but it’s a risk to be on the lookout for. It was a delicious take on bread pudding. Again not traditional, but I absolutely would have served it to friends. We have a little more runny custard in the fridge and I am going to repeat this in a loaf pan!
I made this for Thanksgiving and it turned out great! The pudding set up perfectly, and the recipe was easy to follow. I’ve never made homemade pudding pie so this was very satisfying and a great first experience with puddings. I appreciate the instructions on how to temper the eggs. Thank you for a great recipe!!
I love Spend With Pennies and have had many successes : ) with Holly’s recipes! However, this one was a total fail. I could not figure out why. So, I went back to the recipe and re-read the directions. The online recipe has very specific instructions about a one minute cook time. But the printable instructions DO NOT have that same information. Just wanted to point this out. So others will have success!
Keep up the fabulous work! Your VLOG has made me truly excited about cooking.
This is my husband’s favorite pie! Thanks for the yummy recipe, turned out delicious! SWP Employee
So glad you love this pie Samantha!
Apparently I should have read the reviews before wasting my time on this. Glad to know I wasn’t the only one that had a runny mess that went straight into the garbage. Found a different recipe that called for egg yolks only and came out perfectly. Might want to remove this recipe so nobody else wastes their time especially the day before Thanksgiving
I’m so so sorry to hear that Tracy. I have made this recipe a dozen times in the past month and have not been able to recreate the problem. I can’t say what went wrong for you and I’m disappointed that it didn’t work for you.
I am testing 4 pies at this time (right now), trying different methods to see if I can tell why it may not set for some readers.
Mine just turned out perfect the first try. You have to be super patient with the heat.
Custard came out runny after refrigerated time indicated what can I do to thicken or is there a remedy? Dont have time to redo as it’s for my sons anniversary dinner tonight ♀️
Help!!
Oh no, I’m so sorry this didn’t work out for you. I can’t say for sure why it came out runny, I haven’t experienced the same problem and we have made this several times. We will be restesting and trying to recreate this issue to see if we can help with a remedy.
In the meantime, is it set enough as a pudding? Could it be layered into cups as small trifles?
This was phenomenal. First time trying an egg custard, came out perfect. I always thought the custard was banana flavoured, it’s incredible how flavour comes from the fresh bananas. This will be a staple in my repertoire.
I’m so glad you loved this pie Wee John!
Uhmm where is the rest of it. Like making the whipped cream etc. You give the ingredience, but not the how to of making the whipped cream. I am just learning baking, so it would have been nice.
Jena, if you review the information in the post, there is a link to the post on how to make whipped cream, which you’ll find here. Hope that helps!
I was so looking forward to this but was utterly disappointed with it. The custard burned on the bottom of the pan at medium setting though I was whisking the whole time. I cooled in the fridge for an hour and it had become runny and would not firm up to put in the pie. I question if it should be 4 eggs YOLKS and if the whites made it runny?
I made this pie today and was so excited! Eggs tempered perfectly but the custard did not set. Had it in the refrigerator for over 4 hours but it was still runny. I just put the pie in the freezer and am waiting to see if it freezes. So sad it hasn’t set. I did bring it to a boil for over 4 minutes and it was thickening nicely until I added the butter and vanilla. Maybe I should have kept it on the heat after adding the butter and vanilla.
I haven’t made this pie yet, but I wanted to ask- can I use a graham cracker crust or does it have to be pre-baked?
Yes, it does mention in the post that a graham crust can be used. Enjoy it!
i had the same problem, it was thick before then after chilling it. it was runny.
made custard before but never had a problem.
so i tired saving it by reheating with little more milk it came out to be a lumpy and could see egg cooked. so i had to tired other custard recipe and came out perfect.
I’m sorry this recipe didn’t work out for you, Alissa!
I’m currently waiting for the custard to cool in the fridge and I can already tell this will be a hit! The custard tastes delicious, and while it got a bit chunky I’m pretty sure that was my fault for cooking it too long but I fixed it 100% by running an immersion blender through the custard for about 30 seconds and straining it into my bowl. It looks, smells, and tastes great! I also used soy milk instead of whole milk and that didn’t seem to change the texture or anything which was nice. For those of you who are finding it too runny, make sure you let it cook until it boils and LET IT BOIL FOR A FULL MINUTE. Thanks for the recipe!
My pudding/custard came out great! Thabk you for posting this recipe! For those having issues with runny pudding or grainy eggs here are some tricks that worked for me.
1) grainy eggs. Start out by using eggs that are already room temperature if possible. Let the heat from the thickened base mixture cool to almost a room temperature. Temper the eggs that way. If the mixture was still too hot and you have grainy eggs stop and run the eggs you were trying to tempure through a fine mesh strainer. This will remove the grainy bits so you can start again. Let the mixture cool more and tempure again. Add back into the pot and reheat bringing it all up at the same temperature.
2) runny pudding. While I was letting my half cup of pudding to cool more for tempering I added the vanilla and butter in the pot to the base and mixed that together. I noticed my pudding was thinning out at an extraordinary rate, which I didn’t think the tempured eggs would fix. So while the base mixture was still cooling I added a half tablespoon more of cornstarch and whisked that in. Then I added my tempured eggs back into the pot. At this point it’s all the same temp. Slowly raise the heat on stove and constantly whisk until thickened.
I hope this helps anyone who may have trouble!
Thanks for sharing your troubleshooting tips Ariel!
Should the pie (with cream topping) be covered if I let sit in the refrigerator overnight?
Hi Kevin, when we refrigerate it before serving we leave it uncovered for at least 3-4 hours! If leaving it overnight, you would loosely cover it.
I don’t know what happened. The custard was nice and thick, I removed from heat, stirred in the butter and vanilla, transferred to a bowl with plastic wrap and stuck in frig for 45 minutes. The custard never got thick again. After 4+ hours, it’s still runny. We had banana cream soup with whipping cream. It was beautiful until i butter and vanilla were added. Are the measurements correct? I’m sad. I so wanted it to work.
Oh no, that is sad Sheila! I am not sure what happened. The measurements in the recipe work great for us every time!
I experience the same thing!
This recipe needs some work. We experienced the same issue where our custard went from thick to runny and never set up. All ingredients were at room temp before mixing, and we even tried several hours in the refrigerator or freezer to thicken it up. No dice. Such a waste of food…
Same thing happened to me and I followed all the measurements exactly – tasted great but super runny
I made this for Easter..the custard did not set up even after 4 hours and overnight of chilling. Although it tasted great, I could not put it into my crust. I made a slurry stirred that in and put it back on the stove to thicken. After seeing a few comments of others that did not thicken…What could I have done wrong that mine not thickened? Thank you!! I love all the recipes I have tried..especially the Chinese recipes!!
Hi Dawn, did you let it come to a low boil once adding the egg mixture? It should thicken during this step and when refrigerated. You can check the video above the recipe card to see the thickness of the mixture at that point.
there shouldn’t be any egg whites in the recipe. Save those for the meringue on top!
Same problem. Perhaps it should be 4 egg yolks and not 4 eggs….
I plan to make this for my fiancé’s birthday which happens to fall on Easter and happens to be his favorite pie!
During the custard part, is it 3 Tbsp of melted butter or room temp softened sliced butter?
Since the mixture is hot when you stir in the butter it should melt once added to it Nicole!
Have lots of bananas I have to use before they go bad.