Easy Creamy Banana Pudding

A little bit ago (which, in the south, can mean anywhere from ten minutes to two weeks ago) I asked my facebook fans which they would prefer- Creamy Banana Pudding or Apple Spice Cake With Creamy Vanilla Sauce. While I didn’t get many comments, the apple cake won by one vote. But I still wanted to do the banana pudding, too. This is one of those desserts that I used to make all the time when my older, now grown kids, were little. It’s easy, it’s tasty and when you have three to five kids running around, you need easy. You also need copious amounts of Xanax, intensive therapy and cheap booze, but that’s a post for another time. But for some reason, it fell by the wayside. I think that sometimes I get so caught up in making new treats, making something different, that I forget that my family loves the old standards too.

This isn’t my recipe. It comes from the Eagle Brand site, although when I started using it back in the day, there WAS no Eagle brand site… there was barely an internet lol. I got it from a magazine. The only thing I do differently is to add some vanilla extract to the mixture. It just adds a little something to it. You can also do this with instant banana, French vanilla, cheesecake or white chocolate puddings. It doesn’t change it enough to make it a sacrilege 😛 but it just makes it a little different.

The difference between this and the old fashioned version is technique. The old ones uses a cooked pudding base. It’s delicious but more time consuming. This one uses instant pudding that is whisked together with some other deliciously creamy ingredients and then layered. You can layer it in a large bowl or individual servings. For the sake of my waistline, I did individual servings this time. Otherwise, my mind says, “Honest Janet, this 8 inch thick layer of pudding that is practically overflowing the bowl is perfectly acceptable!”

You know the drill… get to cooking. Or not cooking in this particular case.

Creamy Banana Pudding

• 1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 1/2 cups cold water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 (4 serving size) package instant vanilla (or banana or cheesecake or snozzberry) pudding mix
• 2 cups heavy cream, whipped to soft peaks
• 1 box vanilla wafers
• 3 to 5 bananas, sliced and dipped in a mix of lemon juice and water and drained on paper towels (prevents them from turning brown)

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the water, vanilla extract and sweetened condensed milk. Add in the pudding mix and whisk until well blended.
2. Chill for five minutes, then fold in the whipped cream.
3. If using a large bowl, layer about one cup of the pudding in the bowl, then top with the desired amount of vanilla wafers, then about a third of the sliced bananas. Repeat this layering two more times.
4. If doing individual servings, do the same layering, but in separate glasses. When doing individual ones, I also like to coarsely crush the cookies too because whole cookies just don’t fit well in smaller glasses.
5. Chill for about an hour or so, then serve.

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