Hi Bold Bakers, I'm Gemma Stafford and this week on Bigger Bolder Baking,
we are making this showstopping banana pudding made in the microwave.
Here's how to do it.
So in a nice big bowl, we're going to add in our egg yolks.
Egg yolks and cracking them for this recipe, if you have egg whites
left over, you can use them to make your own homemade nilla wafers.
So that's a really fun thing to do with those too.
Into this, we are going to add in our flour,
give that a whisky in there.
I like to combine these ingredients first,
all the dry first, try and make sure that there's not too many lumps later.
Then we have a little bit of salt.
Here we have our thickener, which is cornflour, also known as cornstarch.
I like to use this
rather than flour because flour can give you a very grainy pudding.
We tried it that way and it was not great.
So the best results were definitely corn starch.
It gave it a very silky, velvety kind of a pudding.
Okay, Now I'm slowly going to add in our milk.
This is whole milk.
It is full fat.
And you know what fat means, fat is flavor.
So we like to use a whole milk there.
In your diet if you like to use
an alternative kind of milk, like a nut milk or something
like that, you know, that would actually work really well for this recipe too.
So you do you, whatever works.
We like whole milk in my house.
I like to add the liquid in slowly
so you don't get lumps in your pudding.
And this is looking good.
Okay.
That is literally the hardest thing we're going to do for this recipe.
Let's take it over to the microwave and get it in there.
So what we're going to do is we're going to put it in
for a few minutes,
we're going to let it thicken, we're going to whisk it
and we're going to put it back in until it gets lovely and thick.
The timing to cook this pudding is based on my microwave, which is 1200 watts.
So just check the wattage of your microwave because your timing may vary.
For right now gonna pop this in here,
stick it on
for 4 minutes, and let's get cooking.
So take it out at this point and give it a good whisk.
This looks great.
Now, you're probably wondering
how come the eggs aren’t curdling and the cornstarch
actually prevents that from happening.
So rather than curdle, they'll start to thicken, which is really great.
Now, we're going to put this in for another few minutes.
Let it start to get nice and thick and then we'll check on it.
Okay, so I gave it another 2 minutes.
I’m going to take it out and give it a whisk.
And as you can see, it's starting to thicken.
Lovely. We are right on track.
Let's get it back into the microwave for another few minutes.
So this is what we're looking for.
You see the way it is kind of bubbly and formed a skin on top?
This means that it's thickening and it's at a really good stage.
I'm just going to give it a whisk.
Yeah. There you go. You see this?
You see how quickly that thickens?
So it was in the microwave so far for around six and a half minutes or so.
I'm going to pop this in one more time.
Another minute, I want to get it a little bit thicker.
Then we're all good.
So this pudding needed that last minute because as you can see,
it's actually even thicker now.
It needs to get really lovely and hot
for the cornstarch to activate and to start to thicken and do its job.
So this is great.
So all in all, that took less than 10 minutes,
it took around 9 minutes or so, a little bit less than that.
that's a pretty easy dessert.
Let's head over to the countertop.
So the last thing we're going to do to
this pudding is we are going to add in our cold cubed butter
and we're going to add a dash of vanilla extract,
because this is vanilla pudding.
So whisk the butter and the vanilla in there. Once
the butter and vanilla are whisked in, we're going to pass it through a sieve.
We do this to get a really lovely, velvety kind of like finished product and also
just in case this can happen, you know, little bits of egg cook in the microwave.
So you want to strain them all out and just make sure it's really lovely
and smooth. There we go.
Just like that.
Now I know it looks a little bit jiggly now,
but the thing about it is when it gets cold,
the cornstarch really starts to kick in also those eggs and it will thicken a lot.
what we want to do right now is get our cling wrap.
Now when it comes to puddings, custards
that are thickened with cornstarch or flour, we lay cling wrap
directly on the surface of the pudding and not over the bowl.
And the reason we do this is because we want to prevent a skin from forming.
If a skin forms, then it's very hard to get rid of
and it gets whisked into your pudding and then you don't
have that lovely smoothness that you want.
So lay it directly on there to make sure that the air can't get at it.
Okay, lovely.
I'm going to let that cool down at room temperature for a little bit
so it's not so hot, then we're going to pop it into the fridge
and let it get nice and cold.
You can also put this over an ice bath and have it cool down really fast.
So while our pudding is chilling, let's whip our whipped cream.
So here I have some heavy whipping cream, something that's around over 30%
fat content, so it whips up nice and thick,
and we're going to add in a little bit of powdered sugar
and a little bit of vanilla extract
just to add a little more sweetness, a little more flavor to this.
Now what we want to do is just whip it up
on like high speed until it gets nice and thick.
To like, medium, like medium stiff peaks.
When it comes to a
cream for desserts like this one, where it's
kind of one of the main features, make sure that you use good quality cream
because it really does make all the difference.
Okay, lovely.
That's all we need to do. I'm going to pop this into the fridge
until our pudding has cooled down completely.
So it's the time where we have everything ready. Our pudding is chilled.
We have our whipped cream here. I have my Nilla wafers.
I've got a great recipe for Homemade Nilla wafers on my website, so check that out.
Otherwise, use store bought.
They're also super yummy.
And sliced bananas.
Just do the bananas just before you're about to assemble.
Otherwise they start to go brown.
Now a little thing we're going to do here, we're going to add around a quarter
of this whipped cream into our pudding to lighten it up.
And all we're going to do is just fold it in.
So this is just to loosen up the pudding and make it a little bit
creamier and lighter.
Now into this bowl, I'm going to put a third of our pudding mix
and put that on the bottom of your dish and spread it around.
Next, we're going to add in our Nilla Wafers, a nice thick layer of Nilla
Wafers.
We're going to top that with some of our fresh banana.
Now go
again with another third of the banana pudding.
Nilla Wafers.
Another layer of bananas,
and then finish with that last third of pudding on top.
And very lastly, we're going to put that remaining cream that we had left over
piled high in the middle.
Then I'm going to take a cookie and just crumble that over the top of the cream
just just to give you more texture and just kind of contrast.
Okay, lovely.
Now I do want to eat this,
but banana pudding needs time to settle; the cookies need time to soak up
get nice and moist and the flavors and the texture just get better with time.
So we're going to pop it into the fridge for a few hours.
Then you can take it out, scoop it and enjoy.
And there you have it, a show stopping dessert made in no time.
You have all these beautiful layers and you also have the different textures
and the color.
There's a lovely contrast with this dessert.
There is a thing with me where, like all my favorite desserts
are like
soft, they’re mousse, they’re meringue, they’re puddings.
Something like this is just, I'm all about it.
It's so easy to make.
You can make this dish in less than 20 minutes.
Like, that's insane.
What an impressive dessert. It's absolutely delicious.
I really hope you make it.
And if you like other showstopping
microwave recipes just like this one, stick around.
I've got tons more videos for you to check out.