Wow mom with the very best banana pudding ever
I am about to drop into your lap what has to be the world’s best banana pudding recipe — for which you need no cooking skills whatsoever.
Now, banana pudding is not rocket science, which makes it an ideal recipe for me. I’m no serious baker, but if I can pull off a ricotta cheesecake with plums, I can for sure do up a pudding of which your Southern granny would approve. But not without someone else’s recipe. Which is where The Domestic Rebel Hayley Parker comes in.
Her recipes are among my most “saved” for future exploration. And when I saw the photos with this one — flaky, breakaway Nilla Wafer crumbs, swollen with dessert humidity, a glimpse of slick banana, the creamy pudding, the airy whipped cream — I had to make it.
And it seriously delivered on its “best ever” name.
At its core, banana pudding is essentially a trifle, with fruit — sliced banana “coins” in this case — layered in among something cakey and something creamy. And although modern banana pudding is forever chained to Nilla wafers, which do something magical when they get just a tad soggy amid these other ingredients, the earliest incarnations of this dessert included sponge cake, as do many trifles.
To be honest, the Nilla wafer metamorphosis into something cake-like was even better an extra day after I served it to family, which is when I delivered the balance to some coworkers at the office. Because I’m sweet that way. And to get the dang thing out of my fridge before I ate it all.
One of my co-workers, Jay Reddick,
a North Carolina native who knows his way around what he calls “nana puddin,” was similarly starstruck.
“I’m a vanilla wafers guy,” he explained. “And the proportion here was perfect. It didn’t distract from the creamy consistency, but there were plenty of them. Really, ratios on everything were just right. Not too whippy, just sweet enough.”
Enough to make me wish I could take credit. But I can’t. I just followed the instructions.
My colleague Patrick Connolly, a Nilla Wafer fan as well, reached out to his mom to get his childhood nostalgia facts straight.
“I don’t have a lot of banana pudding experience,” he began (he hails from Pittsburgh, PA), but I love Nilla wafers … and was delighted to see them. [The pudding] had the right combination of fluffy cream and pudding. It’s the kind of thing you can eat midday or at a summer barbecue without feeling too heavy or sleepy.”
Moments later, he had even more Connollybased input.
“Per my sweet mother,” he wrote, “‘We did have [Nilla wafers] for snacking, but I also made banana pudding with them, too … all layered nicely like a torte — so yummy!”
Nothing better than texts from mom. Though this pudding — seriously, you can’t mess it up! — rivals even that. Make it.
The Very Best Banana Pudding Ever
2 1/2 cups heavy whipping
cream
3/4 cup confectioners
sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract 8 ounces (1 package) cream cheese, softened
14 ounces (1 small can) sweetened condensed milk
5 ounces (1 large box) instant banana pudding mix (just the dry powder)
1 cup 2% or whole milk
11 ounces (1 box) Nilla
wafers
About 8 medium bananas, sliced (make sure they’re barely ripe — too ripe/soft and they’ll brown faster)
Lightly grease a 9- by 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray. Set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer, add in heavy whipping cream, sugar and vanilla extract and, using whisk attachment, whip until stiff peaks form, 5-7 minutes. Remove whipped cream to a separate bowl, and set aside.
To the wiped-out standmixer bowl add cream cheese and, using the same whisk attachment, whip until fluffy, about 30 seconds. Add in sweetened condensed milk, and beat until smooth and no lumps of cream cheese remain, stopping to scrape bottom and sides of bowl as needed. Add in dry pudding mix, and mix well, then slowly stream in milk. Mix until fully combined.
Add 2/3 of the whipped cream to pudding mixture, and fold in gently until fully combined and no whipped cream streaks remain. Set aside.
In your prepared pan, place an even layer of Nilla wafers. Top with an even layer of sliced banana coins. Top this with half the pudding mixture, and spread evenly. Repeat with another layer of Nilla wafers, followed by another layer of sliced banana coins, and the remaining pudding layer, spreading it evenly. Top with the remaining whipped cream. Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight.
Just before serving, crush remaining Nilla wafers and sprinkle over the top. Store leftovers covered in the fridge, maximum 2 days. — Courtesy of The
Domestic Rebel