Banana Vanilla Pudding

Hello again! July started with a sizzle in St. Louis. We alternate between sunny scorching days and storms with torrential downpours. After a particularly spectacular storm a couple of weeks ago, we woke up to find that a tree in our backyard had split in half- with the half that crashed leaning on our back porch! 

On the food front, we're sticking to simple meals and old favorites- yogurt rice with sprouts and subzis, veggie burgers on a bed of shredded raw vegetables, hummus wraps, idlis and dosas. On a whim, I tried making faloodas from a little "falooda kit" packet and were thrilled at the nostalgic taste of the slippery basil seeds and bright pink rose flavor. Last weekend, I picked up more falooda supplies and will soon write a post about this classic summer sundae. 

Here's another classic dessert- not one that I grew up eating but something I tasted one summer in NYC at the Magnolia Bakery and felt an instant connection to. Nilla banana pudding is a Southern US classic treat of comforting rich custard, vanilla biscuits (wafers) and sliced bananas. For more about the right way and the wrong way to make this dessert, check out this post. 

Of course, the minute I ate a spoonful of banana pudding, it brought back taste memories of Brown & Polson's instant vanilla custard- my mother made this often and loved serving it with mixed fruits, as a topping on homemade date and walnut cake, and spooned on top of jiggly cubes of jelly. 

You could easily make some instant custard of that type and layer it with vanilla wafers and bananas for a 5 minute version of this dessert. I used eggs and cornstarch to make the custard from scratch, which takes about 20 minutes. 

Banana Vanilla Pudding

(Adapted from this recipe; serves a crowd of 12 to15)

1. Make the custard:

• Whisk 2 eggs in a saucepan. 
• Whisk in 4 cups 2% milk.
• In a small bowl, mix 5 tbsp. cornstarch with a little milk to make a paste.
• Pour the cornstarch into the milk and mix well.
• Stir in a scant 1 cup sugar (less would do) and 1/2 tsp. salt.
• Cook this entire milk mixture on medium heat until it gets hot and bubbly, stirring every few minutes. 
• When it boils for a minute and thickens well, it is done.
• Turn off the heat and stir in 1 tbsp. butter and 2 tsp. vanilla extract. 
• Let the custard cool for 20 minutes.

2. Assemble the pudding by layering Nilla wafers, 3 bananas (sliced quite thinly on the diagonal) and vanilla custard in a casserole dish. I made 3 layers. Cover and chill for 4 hours, then serve and eat up within the next several hours.

Please know that this recipe makes a LOT of pudding. You can easily halve the pudding recipe if you want to.

Have a lovely week, everyone!