Sheila's Homemade Banana Pudding

This dessert is a sure potluck hit. You should double or triple the recipe. It looks nice in a big yellow mixing bowl which I recommend everyone get because, well, everyone should have a big yellow glass mixing bowl. There are easier ways to make banana pudding, but no Jello mix can quite compete. You can't make it like this out of a box. Between the cooking time, the assembly time, and making up the topping, it can take an hour to put it all together. It’s very much worth it. It’s easy to double or triple the recipe. You just have to be really careful keeping it stirred while cooking a very large batch so it doesn’t burn on the bottom of the pot.

Ingredients

Pudding

• 1/2 Cup Sugar or you can substitute Stevia or something like that to lower the calories. You just have to change the prep a bit.
• 1/3 Cup Flour or ¼ cup corn starch
• 3 Egg Yolks, Save the egg whites for making meringue if you plan to do that.
• 2 Cups Milk
• 1 Box Vanilla Wafers
• 5 Bananas
• 1/2 Teaspoon Vanilla (a bit more if you use something beside vanilla extract)
• A dash of salt

Meringue:

• 1 Teaspoon Cream of Tartar, for making meringue
• 3/4 cups Sugar, for making the meringue
• 3 Egg Whites, for making meringue
• Alternate topping – large tub of Whipped Cream or Cool Whip

Directions:

1. In a large pot or saucepan, mix flour, egg yolks (beaten), milk and salt. If using sugar add it now. If using artificial sweetner, set it aside till after the pudding is cooked as heat will kill the sweetness.
2. Heat over medium eat, stirring constantly with a wire whisk. It takes around 15 minutes for the pudding to thicken. Don’t let it scorch.
3. When the pudding thickens and begins to bubble, remove it from the heat and set it aside to begin to cool. Add vanilla when it's cooled a bit and stir it up good.
4. In your big yellow mixing bowl, place a layer of vanilla wavers in the bottom of the bowl. If making a double or triple batch, make sure you have an extra bowl or a really, really big bowl.
5. Slice bananas and cover the layer of cookies. Alternate cookies and bananas
6. If using artificial sweetener (which will cause diabetics in the group to kiss you feet) stir the sweetener into the pudding. Just follow the replacement amounts on the box of sweetener. At any rate, with your pudding ready to go, every few layers, spoon the pudding over the cookies and bananas. Add more cookies and bananas and pudding layers until you fill up the bowl. 
7. At this point you should preheat the oven to 350 degrees if you are doing meringue. If you are doing Cool Whip skip to step #13.
8. Place all the egg whites in another mixing bowl. Add a teaspoon of cream of tartar and 3/4 cup of sugar or sweetener two tablespoons at a time while beating the egg whites. It could take up to 15 minutes.
9. Continue whipping egg mixture till it forms stiff glossy peaks.
10. Pour meringue mixture over the top of the banana pudding; spread it out over the bowl. Dab at the top of the meringue with a spoon till curly peaks form.
11. Set the pudding on a baking sheet and bake in the hot oven till the peaks begin to brown.
12. Remove the pudding and allow it to cool to room temperature, and then chill in the refrigerator. Do not put hot meringue straight out of the oven in the refrigerator. It will collapse as I discovered the hard way.
13. If you’re doing Cool Whip instead of meringue, wait till the pudding cools at least to slightly warm and then spoon whipped topping over the top of the pudding. At this point I add cookies in decorative patterns on top of the topping.
14. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
15. You may have to padlock the refrigerator door while the pudding is cooling. Otherwise, you may get up Sabbath morning and find a big hole in your pudding.

Serving Suggestion:

This part’s simple. Pull off the plastic, stick a big spoon in it and get out of the way. I promise you that you will be taking home a nice clean bowl.