Tag: banana pudding

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Pudding Bananas

Listen to Jesse.

Do not make banana pudding with green bananas. Even if the fruit has a tinge of green on the ribs, the banana will be hard and bitter. You must use bananas that are ripe.

Now, you’re not going to find ripe bananas in the grocery store–sometimes I think the public has been conditioned by years of buying green bananas that any banana with a dark spot is spurned–so you have to buy them a bit green.

Fortunately, bananas are climacteric; they ripen after picking. My daddy, who was stationed in the Pacific during WWII, knew quite well how a banana tasted, and put bunches on top of the refrigerator–where we couldn’t reach them–to ripen.

Place grocery bananas in a paper sack–plastic doesn’t let the fruit breathe–and give it a good twist to keep out fruit flies. In two or three days, when the fruit is soft and aromatic you’re ready to make banana pudding. Or banana pound cake. Or peel and eat.

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Banana Pineapple Pudding

Mix two packages instant vanilla pudding mix with a cup of milk, refrigerate until partly set. Stir in a can of condensed milk, 8 oz. each of sour cream and whipped topping, 3 ripe (freckled) bananas, sliced or diced, a drained 8 oz. can crushed or chunk pineapple. Mix very well, and refrigerate. Layer a casserole with vanilla wafers and pudding—wafers first, pudding last. Top with whipped cream, and sprinkle with wafer crumbs. Some people will sprinkle coconut between the layers and with the topping. Chill very well before serving.

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Traditional Banana Pudding

Banana pudding casts a golden glow upon our lives.  Never have I met anyone who doesn’t like it, but I know in the cockles of my heart that should I ever, my dislike for them will be immediate, profound, and on the spot. I’ll probably stomp on their toe or something.

Like so many treasures on our sideboard, banana pudding, has been corrupted by convenience. What’s most often served as banana pudding is made with cheap cookies, packaged Jell-O, green bananas, and topped with Cool Whip. But in the best traditions of Mid-South cooking, we make banana pudding with Nabisco/Nilla Vanilla Wafers (kinda/sorta the same thing), ripe, fragrant bananas, and a rich vanilla custard, and top it with a sweet baked meringue.

First, the custard. Separate 4 eggs; blend the yolks well with 2 cups whole milk (or, better, half-and-half), and a teaspoon vanilla extract. Put this mix in a double boiler. Combine ½ cup sugar with three tablespoons all-purpose flour, stir into the warm liquid, and cook until thick. Cool.

You’ll need about 5 bananas. I implore you to select bananas well beforehand, because if you can only find bananas that have a tinge of green on them, you can set them on a shelf in the kitchen until they soften and ripen. And, yes, a banana will develop sugars in the pulp after being picked. Wait until the bananas are flecked with brown. Trust me, this is an essential step. An 11 oz. box of wafers has about 40 cookies. Use all of them.

Begin with a layer of custard in the bottom of an 8×8 baking dish, then a layer of wafers, then a layer of sliced bananas. Repeat. Whip whites of six eggs with ¼ cup sugar until stiff. Top pudding with meringue, and place in a very hot oven (400) until lightly browned. Cool thoroughly before serving. This is best made the morning of and refrigerated after.

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Top Twelve Mississippi Recipes

The first time I submitted a Mississippi top twelve, it was like throwing a June bug down in a flock of chickens.

The pot roast was devastated by a barrage of loyalists who maintained it’s “just got Yankee written all over it.” The red velvet cake was accused, convicted, and shot for being a Waldorf recipe, and the pecan pie was mined by a sweet potato. I substituted pound cake for red velvet and sweet potato pie for pecan. The roast lost to stewed greens–which damn near lost out to limas.

Here’s the treaty, but rumor has it the pecan pie faction plans a fifth column action from Belzoni.

 

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Banana Pudding Cookies

For best flavor, you must use bananas that are soft, aromatic, and with a light freckling. The vanilla wafers should just be broken up into small pieces, not reduced to crumbs. Some people top these with whipped cream and a banana slice, but that makes them soggy.

1/2 cup softened butter
1 cup cane sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 ripe banana mashed
1 package banana cream instant pudding mix
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup smashed vanilla wafers

Preheat oven to 350, and line baking pans with lightly oiled parchment paper. Combine flour and baking soda, then set aside. Cream butter and sugar thoroughly, add the banana, pudding mix, and eggs. Mix until smooth and slowly stir in the dry ingredients, then blend in the chips and wafers. Use about a tablespoon of dough for each cookie. Bake until lightly browned, about ten minutes.