I took it upon myself to make an old-fashioned banana pudding this past weekend because it is hard to find a restaurant that doesn’t use the instant mix. Needless to say, I can’t recall the last time I had made banana pudding. Like eons ago. But I do have a bunch of old recipes that my Southern mother, as well as some of her family, used, so I found the one on banana pudding. And I have no regrets because it turned out awesome!!! Even the meringue was pretty. Just call me Julia Child! Woo Hoo!
So if you want to give this a try, I’m going to go through the steps I used making it.
First off, get out the clear Pyrex dish. That is the standard dish for making banana pudding. I have the one my mother used when she made banana pudding. She always used that kind of dish and so did most of the other women especially for church dinners. I remember you could see the pudding in it, so I stuck with tradition and used the Pyrex dish. The one I have is 8-inch diameter and 3 inches deep. This will make 4-6 servings depending on how piggy you are.I cut down the recipe because I didn’t need a large amount. I only did one layer instead of two. If you want a large, two layer pudding, double this recipe.
Preheat oven to 350.
You’ll need:
Vanilla wafers,
Banana
¾ cup sugar
1/8 cup plus a tablespoon of flour (I had a ¼ cup measure that I used and may have used a little more than half of the measure)
1 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1 tsp butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
Meringue
2 egg whites
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp vanilla
Get an egg separator and separate the yolks from the white. If you get any of the yolks in the egg whites, your meringue won’t make or so my momma always said. Set aside egg whites.
Put a saucepan on the stove, low heat and put butter in it to melt.
Cover bottom of baking dish with vanilla wafers. Next cut up the banana and layer on top of wafers. I only used one banana and that was enough. You can put as much banana as you like.Plus I used mini vanilla wafers, and they worked really well. Set dish aside. Note: your bananas may darken. Mine did before I got the pudding ready but that doesn’t matter.
You need to mix flour and sugar. (I used stevia and sugar blend. It worked great, but you use less. Stevia/sugar blend, use a ¼ cup.) Add ½ cup milk to flour and sugar. Mix. Pour in saucepan with melted butter. Use fork to blend egg yolks. Add to pudding mix and whisk. Add remaining milk to pudding. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly. I used the whisk. After a few minutes, the pudding will thicken. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract. Whisk.
While your pudding mix is hot, pour over bananas and wafers. If you are doing a large pudding, only pour half of the mix over the bottom layer. Then add another layer of wafers and banana and use the other half of the mix over the second layer.
Meringue:
Note: This is an optional topping but it's required if you want the old-fashioned pudding, which would have never been served without meringue on top.
Put egg whites in large mixer bowl. Use mixer on the highest speed and gradually add sugar. Whites should foam and then start to get fluffy and when you lift mixer out of meringue, it will have peaks. The sugar is what makes meringue have peaks so you may have to add a little more to make meringue stiff. Add vanilla. This is optional, but I remembered that my mom always added vanilla, so I did, too. Mix until egg whites are stiff.
To make it pretty, you can circle the dish with vanilla wafers. Then cover the top of the pudding with the meringue. Bake in oven about 10 minutes or just until the meringue peaks have browned. Set pudding aside to cool. You can cool it in the refrigerator if you like it cold. I like mine warm, so I put it on the table for an hour or so. Store leftover in the fridg and warm up in microwave. Enjoy!
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