I like to cook. Sometimes my daughter likes to eat.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Banana Pudding without the wafers

The internet is an amazing thing for lots of reasons, but especially for cooking. I have a fairly large collection of cookbooks, I used to read and reference them all the time. But these days I rarely have time, so it's nice to know that I can plug x ingredient and the word recipe into Google and come out with some ideas. Not tested, mind you, not proven, but at least a starting point for a technique or a flavor combination.

One of my favorite resources is the
Chowhound Home Cooking Message Board. It's populated, seemingly 24/7, by a selection of good cooks who almost always have the answer to your questions. Slow cooker recipes? Check. How to keep galangal and lemongrass? Check. How to make banana pudding without the wafers? Check!

I'm not a big dessert maker. Savories are my bag, and I'm frankly a little afraid of dessert chemistry. So I was happy to have a place to turn for pudding advice after my
chocolate pudding came out one-dimensionally sweet, without the full mouthfeel of the real thing. And after I discovered that apparently what most of the country means by banana pudding is packaged vanilla pudding with banana slices, layered with Nilla wafers. I can see the attraction if you grew up with that as comfort food, but I didn't, so I don't even want to know.

Thanks, theSauce, for your recipe for real homemade banana pudding. I made a change or two from the original, linked below, but overall this is theSauce's vision and technique. It was sweet for my taste, but R pronounced it perfect.


1.25 cups sugar
1/3 cup + 1 T cornstarch
Pinch of salt
3 cups cold whole milk
2 egg yolks
2 T room temp unsalted butter
2 t vanilla
1 t Meyers dark rum
3 ripe but firm bananas, sliced

Combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large saucepan. Whisk in the milk until the mixture is completely smooth. Place the saucepan over medium heat and stir until the mixture is warm.

Whisk the egg yolks in a small bowl until blended. Stir a small amount of the hot milk mixture into the egg yolks and stir (to prevent the egg yolks from curdling). Cook for about 10 minutes, whisking continuously, until the custard is quite thick. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter, rum and bananas.

Pour the custard into a bowl or into individual ramekins. Pressing a layer of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding will prevent a "skin" from forming. Place in the fridge to cool completely before serving, at least one hour for ramekins and a few hours for a full bowl.

Enjoy with a cold glass of milk.

Recipe riff: Recipe from theSauce

21 Comments:

Blogger Undercover Angel said...

This sounds awesome. I'm going to try to make it tomorrow - I bet my kids would love it! I'm a terrible cook so I hope it turns out okay.

8:04 PM

 
Blogger Sunshine said...

This recipe is very poorly written, making it difficult to follow.

When you add a little hot milk mixture to the eggs in the bowl, it says 'Cook it for 10 mins'. Do you mean add the egge mixture to the saucepan?

At the end you say to add bananas and rum and butter to the saucepan and when it cools off to add this to the glasses. Do you mean to cook it for another 20 mins and then cool it and add to glasses?

Don't publish if you can't do it right.

1:56 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey i tried it and it was good for other readers what you do is add the egg yolks to the whole milk mixture and then you stir until thick and at the end you add the rum vanilla and the banana's.

6:53 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh and it was gooooooood i really liked it, I cant believe Sunshine said that she or he must have not had figured out what you ment

6:55 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bananas photo by Steve Hopson, www.stevehopson.com

Usage requires attribution.

8:21 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Finally, a banana pudding recipe without the vanilla wafers! I can't wait to try it.

4:52 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What is the "t"? you texting all this? or too lazy to add sp and bsp after the "t"?

9:26 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

capitol T is Tablespoon, lower case t is teaspoon. Do you ever cook!?

4:50 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh my...such hate over a pudding recipe...get a life!

Thanks for the recipe!

8:20 PM

 
Blogger Literary Juice said...

I have never seen so many angry comments for a recipe in my life! Hahahaha.

12:41 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

this recipe was written extremely horribly. very unclear. i had to go on youtube to figure out how to make a custard. thanks for nothing. yikes. how much hot milk mixture to add? add what to the saucepan? proofread your recipe. YIKES

AND when i went to the comment section to get help. all i saw was someone saying how good this was instead of answering all the decriphancies. when you write a horrible recipe at least correct your mistakes in the comment area instead of acting like you did nothing wrong under an anonynmous username. yikes you messed up my whole dessert now i have to start over.

2:33 PM

 
Blogger daughter411 said...

So, the recipe wasn't written out perfectly, but if anyone knows how to make custard, then it wasn't that difficult to follow.

I modified it a bit for myself (increased the amount of each ingredient) and pureed the bananas and added them in at the end. Tasted fantastic!!

For anyone who doesn't understand about adding the hot milk to the egg yolk, you just add a small portion of the hot milk first to the eggs, to temper them (prevents curdling, as he stated) and then add the tempered egg yolk to the sauce pan, continuing to cook all of it until it is nice and thick. Then, once you have a very thick sauce, remove it from heat, and add the remaining three ingredients.

I had been looking everywhere for just a plain banana pudding, not one with the wafers and sliced bananas.

This one is delicious and turned out great!

11:03 AM

 
Anonymous Otto said...

If you make the other type with cornstarch pudding it is pretty good but I am glad you posted a recipe without the cookies and meringe. I understand your comment about the chocolate pudding too. I doubled the cocoa because I thought it tasted more like sweetness than chocolate myself (I thought double might be a bit much but it was just right for me). I might have reduced the sugar a bit too but don't remember. I have some bananas that are ready to be too ripe soon and look forward to trying your recipe. Thank you.

7:06 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This pudding was awesome!! I didn't have any rum, but it still came out great. I also substituted another egg yolk for the 1/3 cup corn starch (I only had 2T left), and it still came out great. I was eating it hot off the burner it was so good. Thanks for posting!

7:57 AM

 
Anonymous Rebecca Pearce said...

All the recipe haters - GET A LIFE!

I am always surprised when people with a desire to cook something sweet and wonderful have a nasty personality!

I mean, cooking comes from the heart and you can't cook a fabulous dessert when you are feeling mean as a b****?!


I GOOGLED a banana pudding recipe without wafers and landed here.

I AM GLAD I DID.

The blog owner has said that they are not confident of their dessert skills.

Moreover, this is an ADAPTED recipe.


And if you really want so much of hand-holding while cooking, then you probably need a basics cooking course FIRST!

Lol


I am gonna try this yumm pudding. Anything with bananas HAS to be good!:)

5:36 AM

 
Anonymous Rebecca Pearce said...

And if you DO have any issues, people USE GOOGLE!

Or better - watch a Youtube video.

Seriously!

5:39 AM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This banana pudding is amazing. I pureed my bananas prior to their addition. Despite some of the comments, please do not disregard this recipe until you have tried it.

4:11 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

There are some pretty ignorant people in this world. I understood this recipe just fine. Turned out great! Ignorant people need to be ignored. Get a life.

2:14 PM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

Thanks for this recipe! I didn't have rum and I am sure that would have made the flavor even better, but it was still excellent without it as my picky eater still loved it (and it allowed me to use my 3 old bananas--so it was a win-win).

10:24 AM

 
Blogger Unknown said...

Everyone that is complaining about this recipe never inherited your grandmothers recipies that leave out baking temperature and time or refer to a pinch of this and a handful of that.

4:45 AM

 
Anonymous VladTepec said...

I am in agreement with the remarks about hostile comments, and from a person who tags him/herself as "sunshine. For my part, I am ecstatic to find a recipe for banana pudding that eliminates wafers. I am also able to read a recipe and have a sense for its ultimate taste: I have no doubts about this one.

12:43 PM

 

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