I am fortunate enough to teach at a school where pi is not merely celebrated for a day (3/14) but an entire week…and pi’s homonym pie gets a fair share of the party as well. Pi day? Are we still talking about that? Wasn’t that a month ago? Ah yes…what an astute observer you are! Well done. This post, like the one before it, is a relic from the past.

A wall of pi puns (although, let’s be honest, some of the youngest ones didn’t really get the concept and made “Camouflage Pi” and “Rainbow Pi” instead of, say, “Cutie Pi.” Ah well.)

On Thursday of Pi Week, families, students, and teachers bring in pie of all different types. We eat pie at recess and lunch and then the teachers have stomachaches AND classes of hyped-up children to teach for the afternoon. But we wouldn’t have it any other way.

For this particular occasion, my own contribution was a Butterscotch Banana Cream Pie. The butterscotch flavor simply comes from using dark brown sugar instead of white when making the cream filling. Speaking of cream fillings, I have made quite a few creamy fillings over the stovetop at this point (whisk, whisk, whisk) and I still get a massive feeling of glee every time the consistency magically transforms, within seconds, from liquid to custard.

Here is the pie in a stage of assembly (and yes, that is a banana peel pi sign behind it, never fear.) Ken likes to put the bananas on top of the filling instead of inside the filling, as he says, “the bananas start to weep under the hot filling, leaving you with a weepy pie.” Who wants a weepy pie?

This pie has a vanilla wafer crumb crust. Since I practically have an anxiety attack every time I have to enter a store that isn’t called Trader Joe’s (jokes) I used the TJ’s Ultimate Vanilla Wafers. It’s not the cheapest way to make this crust, but I would definitely recommend…and then you get to sprinkle some more cookies on top once the whipped cream goes on there…oh yeah. It’s what you want.

One of my teacher-friends (who had probably already sampled about six other pies) deemed this pie “refreshing,” a term that I must say I have never before heard applied to a banana cream pie. I think that she was on to something though. The pies in Ken’s cookbook generally run low on the sugar…he doesn’t oversweeten. I appreciate that. A little less sugar sometimes means a lot more enjoyable.