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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Slice bananas and cover the
layer of cookies. Alternate cookies and bananas
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Continue whipping egg mixture
till it forms stiff glossy peaks.
- 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.
- Set the pudding on a baking
sheet and bake in the hot oven till the peaks begin to brown.
- 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.
- 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.
- Cover with plastic wrap and
refrigerate.
- 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.