The Ultimate Banana Pudding Recipe

We are gonna make the most nostalgic, but elevated and delicious banana pudding. You know why? It's homemade pudding, super simple. It's whipped cream. We're gonna put some of the whipped cream into the pudding so it makes it luscious, melt in your mouth. Layer it together with bananas and those wafer cookies and you're gonna end up with the best dessert, nostalgic, but also people-pleasing. Let's make it. Banana pudding is actually really easy and I know most of us are gonna make it with a box of vanilla pudding. That's great, but you know what? Homemade vanilla pudding is super simple and it tastes even better. So I think this is gonna show you why it's worth it. This is my case for making it. And it's gonna start with whole milk. Whole milk has more fat, it has more flavor. We're gonna add a little bit of heavy cream. So again, think of playing with the richness that we're going on here to make sure it's a really good pudding. You, of course, need sugar. It's a pudding. We're gonna add in some sugar. You also need, along with egg yolks, which I do have, you need some type of other thickening agent to make sure it sets properly. We want this to be a layered pudding and while you want it to have some viscosity to it or some good smooth texture, it needs to hold together. So cornstarch. We're gonna put that right in here. And you always remember, you have to mix a cornstarch with cool or room temperature liquids. Never with a hot liquid or it will clump up. We're, of course, gonna add in a little bit of salt. You need to balance all those flavors out. And then the egg yolks. You can see I separated the whites out. And what these do is add more beautiful holding together quality, but also it really adds just a nice richness. So I'm gonna turn the heat on and what we're gonna do is whisk this all together. Now you're probably thinking you put the egg yolks in already. Usually we temper those. Yeah, I did. And you can do that. But what we're gonna do is continually be whisking, bring this up till it starts to get hot and then keep cooking till it's a pudding. So I want you to see, I've been cooking this for a few minutes. I just brought off the heat to show you and see how it's starting to already hold a nice shape and you can see it's a nice kind of pudding already. I cook it just a little bit longer. You're cooking it here on the stove to make sure all that cornstarch is activated and that's truly creating your pudding right here. To activate cornstarch, it needs to be heated all the way through. So as I'm stirring it, do you see how it's keeping that shape from my whisk? You can continually see those ribbons and you can see thick bubbles coming right into the center. That means we're gonna be activating all that cornstarch, that we have a pudding that is holding its great texture and that we're ready to go. So my pudding is pretty much done, but we wanna make sure it's flavored well. So we're gonna add in some butter that's at room temperature and what this is going to do is of course, kind of make it more the correct texture, but it also gives you that beautiful flavor and that's what you really want. And of course with vanilla, super important here to have good vanilla extract. What I'm gonna do is just whisk that in until that's fully melted, which you can see, the pudding is hot. So it melts it, look how quickly it is melting that butter. And at first it seems like it's thinning it down, but don't worry, as this cools, that's when everything tightens back up. So if you're seeing, look at this beautiful texture we're getting right here. It's absolutely gorgeous. So as that's melted, I'm gonna pass it now through, I just have a bowl with a sieve over the top. So I'm gonna pour this right in, let it pass through and we'll talk about storing it. So this is really quick and by the way, it's gonna be, there could be a problem with this and I'm sorry in advance, but this could cause you to start making pudding all the time because it's that easy and you know what, one bite and you're gonna say, why don't I just make pudding? So what we're gonna do is we're gonna take a little bit of plastic wrap and I don't want it to form a skin. I know some people love skin on pudding, that's great. But for this, we're gonna fold some whipped cream into it later. It's gonna be easier if we don't let a skin form. So anytime you put something directly on it, in this case, some plastic wrap here, we're just gonna put it directly on and what this is gonna do is trap out that air from creating that skin and we can pop this right into the refrigerator, let it chill. Once it's chilled, we can put everything together. I just took the pudding out of the fridge, it's nice and chilled and you can see, look how nice and thick it is. Now we're gonna get the texture just perfect by folding in some whipped cream, which we need to make first. The whipped cream is gonna go half into the pudding to make it the right consistency, like fluffy, beautiful and then half the whipped cream is gonna get put on top to finish this off. So in here, I have a bowl, obviously, and I'm gonna add just heavy whipping cream. So heavy whipping cream means it has stabilizers that are gonna help it be volumous and whip just into whipped cream and yes, it has a better flavor than the purchased, ready to go whipped topping. So in here, we're gonna add a couple things. We're gonna add a little bit of Greek yogurt. You can do sour cream too. This is a stabilizer, actually. It also, to me, offsets the flavor and the sweetness just enough to make it a nice balance, but you don't know what's in there. It just makes it, to me, perfect. Little bit of powdered sugar, sifted, of course. And what is that gonna do? Sweeten it, because whipped cream, heavy whipping cream is not sweetened. So we want just enough to kind of bring that flavor out and then, of course, some vanilla. So the vanilla's going to add that flavor we really want and just kind of harmonize everything together. So we wanna whip this, get it foamy and then let it get to stiff peaks. So in a couple minutes, you get the most beautiful whipping cream. So if you're ever making pie, if you're ever making a dessert, strawberry shortcake, any type of summer wonderful thing, make your own whipped cream, because it's so delicious. And look how it just like beautifully smooth. Ugh, and so, it's so much better when you make your own. So what we have here is our pudding. You can see if I take this back, it held its shape just perfectly. But I wanna get the right consistency so it has kind of a nice light texture. So what we're gonna do is just eyeball, but take half of this whipped cream and put it right into here. So what this is gonna do is be folded together and it's gonna create just this beautiful, lighter texture. And just take it and kind of start going halfway through and we're just gonna slowly fold this together. So you can see this pudding chills up really nicely and gets nice and perfectly just, it could be in a pie even. But what we now wanna do is make it so it will have this whipped cream worked into it, which takes a little bit to fold together. But what you're gonna start noticing is it starts breaking it up and becoming lighter. To assemble, I'm already starting and I have my perfectly, like those wafer cookies in the bottom. I'm putting nice ripe sliced bananas on top. And this is now the kind of easy part and the fun part here, is you're just layering and slicing on now these bananas. And then we're gonna put on a beautiful layer of this pudding mixture, which you can see, look how nicely it folds together. Now we have about three layers of the pudding. So again, I just visually do that. Like, and I kind of just dollop it around a little bit. Now I'm doing this in a trifle. I want you to see it as I'm assembling this. I often do this in a nine by 13 pan. So you do not have to do it in a trifle. I'm doing it in this because it's clear, it'll show up. It just kind of depends how you wanna serve it too. But it's easily adaptable for any of those others. So what I do wanna do though is put this down in here. Then I'm gonna use an offset just to kind of try to spread it out a little nicer. You can just gently start working out to the edges. Cause when you do it in a trifle, that's the one thing. You wanna make it kind of look nice. So if you turn it, see how we're just kind of slightly and lightly putting it out there. Now what that's gonna do is start soaking into those wafer cookies, which is what you want. They soak in some of that moisture from the pudding and they start becoming one with the pudding. And that's the point of banana pudding. You get the flavor of ripe bananas. So you want them to be at that perfect ripeness. Whereas to me, there's some brown on them, but they hold, you don't want them mushy and you don't want them to be brown all the way through. So what I'm gonna do is just keep putting this out into an even layer and then do my final layers, ending with the pudding and then putting whipped cream on top and we'll be ready to go. Now I'm finished with my final layer, which is just gonna be that whipped cream that we reserved. The other half of the whipped cream. I'm making sure to get all of it out. So you can see now with these layers and why I did it in this dish for you. So you can adjust it to fit in different dishes, depending on the amount of layers you want. It's just, this is going to now look a little bit more like, I guess, a trifle. It's not a trifle. This is really no different than those cookie whipped cream cakes. I have one on my website, a cookie delight cake, where you take cookies, whipped cream, layer them together. That's really what this is, except it has those bananas and it's more of a pudding in between. So what I'm doing is just taking my final, like look how beautiful this is. This is such to me, a treat. Do remember, it's good if it sits for a little bit because you want those wafer cookies to start soaking it in. But if there's too much air trapped in between around the bananas, what do bananas do? They're gonna turn brown. So you either want to encase them fully so you don't see them and then that air will be trapped out or eat it after it has sat just a little bit so they don't turn brown. So I'm just gonna finish with this. We'll dress it up here at the end, but as you can see, we're gonna put it in the fridge to chill for a little bit, but it is quite the looker. So to finish it up, I am just putting a few of these kind of crushed wafers on top. That's just a way to dress it up. There's no reason for it. Now remember, as this sits, which it's really best to sit probably around, you know, two to three hours in the fridge covered, those cookies soak it in. I don't have patience, so I'm gonna try it. And what happens is those cookies then get soft, but that's the point. You want them to be, but let's just look at this here. I mean, how does this not just look so good? It's beautiful. It has like the perfect texture to it. And what I want you to see is how the layers are holding and just like, ah, they're already soaking in. And to me, you need a little bit of everything. It's nostalgic and yet somehow better because homemaking, wow. Homemaking that pudding, it's so good. It's like light, melt in your mouth, so much flavor. And you're gonna think, well, it's just vanilla pudding. With bananas. Those bananas exude their essence into the pudding. And so it all works together to have immense banana flavor, which is why you need ripe bananas. And those layers just become decadent. So what do I hope you do with this? I hope you say, you know what, it's summer. We're gonna enjoy it. And I'm gonna take this to the next gathering I have. And there is no shame if you make it for yourself either. I have no problem with that. And you can eat on it all week if you want to. So share this video around so other people can see too. Good food is possible to make at home. Let me tell you something. If you share this, you're gonna be everyone's new best friend. Share it around. Check my website, wyseguide.com for this recipe and all my other recipes where you can feel confident and comfortable in making everything with the step-by-step process. Enjoy.