Banana Pudding is an old fashioned southern dessert. It consists of layers of bananas, vanilla wafers, and custard or pudding.

Banana pudding with whipped cream

[edit] Ingredients

[edit] Steps

Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
Place flour, sugar and salt into a heavy saucepan, stir well and set aside.
Beat the egg yolks in a large mixing bowl at high speed of an electric mixer until foamy, add milk, mix well.
Stir the egg yolk mixture into the flour mixture and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until thick and smooth.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
Layer the vanilla wafers alternately with the bananas in a 1½ quart baking dish, beginning with wafers. Put down 1 layer of wafers, then a single layer of bananas, more wafers, more bananas, so on until all the wafers and bananas are used.
Pour custard over the top of all so that all the bananas and wafers are covered. You want the pudding to run down between the cookies and cover all. Shift them around slightly with a knife to allow the custard to run down into all.
Beat the egg whites at high speed of electric mixer for 1 minute. Then gradually add 2 tablespoons sugar, a little at a time, beating constantly until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved. This may take 2-5 minutes. Peaks should be stiff enough to hold their own when the beaters are lifted.
Spread meringue over pudding, pushing it all the way to the edge of the casserole dish to seal.
Bake at 400 degrees for 6 to 8 minutes until the meringue is golden brown.

Grab two boxes of instant vanilla pudding, two or three bananas and a box of Nilla wafers.
Make the vanilla pudding according to the directions. Let the pudding "soft set" which takes about 5-10 minutes.
Line a large bowl with Nilla wafers.
Cut one banana into slices and place them on the bottom of the bowl.
Fill bowl with about half of the pudding mixture.
Cut another banana into slices and lay over pudding.
Fill bowl with the rest of the pudding.
Cut final banana and place slices on top of the pudding.
Finish off with one more layer of Nilla wafers.

For extra vanilla flavor, lay in Nilla wafers with the center layer of bananas.
Top off the bowl of pudding with a little cinnamon, it's a nice garnish and adds a little extra flavor.

Baking the meringue may not properly heat the egg whites for food safety. Use a pasteurized egg white product (found on the baking aisle of your grocery).
You tend to get tired of stirring the pudding, and want to increase the heat to high. Don't! If you get impatient and increase the heat, you risk burning the pudding.