hello this is chef john from food wishes Cobham with baked banana pudding that's
right I am pretty sure I was a southerner in a previous life and I'm
not just basing that on my incredible biscuits or amazing fried chicken but
also based on my baked banana pudding game which really does come out way
better than it should for a Yankee but anyway I realize you're not here for my
geographically based reincarnation theories so let's just go ahead and get
started with this very easy to make pudding base which we'll begin by
separating four large eggs with our whites going into a mixing bowl and our
eoqs going into a saucepan and if you want to get a little bit of the white in
the yolk that's fine but please don't get any yolk into the white because that
can and will cause a problem when we whip our whites so please be careful and
then once those are separated we will continue on by adding a little touch of
sugar to our yolks and a little bit of salt as well as some
all-purpose flour and then we'll go ahead and pour in our milk but not all
of it because a mixture like this is much easier to mix smooth if it's not
too loose so the best strategy here is just splashing about a quarter of it and
then once that's mixed in nice and smooth we can pour in the rest and
that's it once how our milk has been added we can head to the stove where
we're gonna place this over medium heat and we will cook it stirring until it
thickens up and while you can go by temperature here we're not going to
we're just gonna go by look and feel alright the next southern grandma that
uses a thermometer for this will be the first so what we're gonna do is just
keep stirring occasionally testing this with our finger and as soon as it feels
very hot to the touch we're gonna start really paying attention because once it
does come up to temperature it's gonna thicken up pretty quickly and before you
know it your mixer is gonna look a little something like this
which is close but still not quite there so we will keep stirring and cooking for
another minute or so until we have something nice and thick like this and
that's it once we've gotten it to this point we'll remove it from the heat and
we will proceed to mix in the last few ingredients which will be a little bit
of pure and real vanilla extract as well as a tablespoon of banana liqueur if you
have it if you don't it's fine then we'll finish up with a chunk of cold
butter and then we'll take a whisk and give that a stir and we'll keep stirring
until that butter disappears and that's it the pudding part of this process is
done and we can set that aside and move on to slice our bananas which must be
very ripe so make sure you're using bananas that look like this that have
lots of nice black markings on them which are almost never sold like this
okay they're usually pretty green in the store ok so if you're gonna make this
tomorrow make sure you buy your bananas last week and then what we want to do
once these are peeled is cut them into about quarter inch slices or of course
as thick as you want I mean you are after all the Kouba
bidding of this pudding and you're the one working the blade so if you did want
to slice them a little thinner that's fine but I probably wouldn't go any
thicker than this but anyway we'll go ahead and slice up three or four nice
ripe bananas and then transfer them into a bowl and toss them with a little bit
of freshly squeezed lemon juice all right not too much we don't really want
this tasting like lemon but a teaspoon or so will add a little bit of acidity
and I think help keep those bananas from discoloring and that's it once our
bananas are prepped we can move on to final assembly which means transferring
about a quarter of our pudding into the bottom of our baking dish and by the way
I'm going to talk about baking dishes in the blog post because traditionally down
south they use a deeper clear glass baking dish which I don't have but the
good news is anything that's oven safe that will fit all our stuff will work
but anyway we'll spread the bottom of the pudding and then we'll top that with
a layer of vanilla wafer cookies and I'm actually using the mini size here which
I think are a little easier to fit in but the regular size will work just fine
and by the way some people even break these up and crumble them in but I'm
going with one layer of UNCHR humble minis and then what we'll do once our
puddings been waivered is go ahead and top that with exactly one half of our
bananas and by exactly I mean just get it close and that's it once our wafers
have been banana we will finish this first layer by spreading over one half
of the remaining pudding oh by the way you didn't hear this for me but if you
just scatter over a handful of chocolate chips on this first layer that would not
be a bad idea if you like that combination of flavors I mean I love
chocolate dipped bananas but like many people find them extremely awkward to
eat in public so this would be a great way to get that same flavor profile
without feeling like people are staring at you but anyway once that's been
spread over we'll go ahead and top that with a second layer of vanilla wafers
and for this second layer I'm not gonna put quite as many cookies on just so the
cookies don't dominate the pudding okay I want to make sure this is very much
banana forward so I'm gonna place that second layer of cookies on as shown and
then once that set we'll top it with the rest of our bananas and then to finish
this off we'll spread over the rest of our pudding and then what we're gonna
want to do to settle all this down after the last of our puddings been spread
over is give this thing the old tap a tappa and maybe a little shaky shaker
but mostly an ol little tap a tappa and that will knock that out putting down
into all those cracks and crevices and that's it our base is done and we can
move on to make our meringue and to do that we will add a little pinch of cream
of tartar to where egg whites or if you don't have that a couple drops of lemon
juice and I will go ahead and start whipping these up on high speed and as
soon as our egg whites get foamy and look like this we'll go ahead and
sprinkle in a couple tablespoons of sugar sort of gradually a few teaspoons
at a time and that's it once that's been added
we'll simply keep whisking until we have some gorgeous fairly well-defined but
not too stiff peaks okay so we want some peaks that will sort of stand up and
hold their shape but we do not want these whites to get super stiff and dry
so for me this is perfect right here and then once those are set we'll go ahead
and spread that over our pudding all the way to the edges and then one tip to
remember if you want a nice appearance once this is baked is that once this is
all spread out evenly take a knife or spatula and try to create some ridges so
the surface is not too smooth all right if it's smooth you're gonna get an even
browning which still looks good but you're not going to get that gorgeous
contrast that you will get if you have some darker spots here and there so I
really think we want to try to roughen up that surface a little bit sort of
like I'm doing here and that's it once we have that looking
exactly like we want it's ready to transfer into the center of a 400 degree
oven for about seven to ten minutes or until our meringue is beautifully
browned and hopefully looking something like this and yes that does look like a
banana cream pie which is sort of basically what this is except better in
my humble and possibly formerly southern opinion and then once this beautiful
pudding comes out of the oven we have a major major decision do we serve it warm
like I'm doing here and like they definitely do down south or should we
let it cool at which point I think it actually tastes better okay for me once
this is cooled it tastes a little bit sweeter with a little more pronounced
banana flavor so you'll have to figure that out but like I said I'm serving
this up warm just like old southern chef John would have done back in the day but
anyway warm or cool we are talking about one extraordinarily delicious and
comforting dessert I mean I love any and all pudding based desserts but this
juice might be my favorite and besides our pudding and beautiful sweet ripe
bananas our formerly crispy vanilla wafers have softened up just the right
amounts to create this recipe signature an extremely comforting texture oh and
there's some shortcut recipes that call for using whipped topping instead of the
meringue which is not nearly the same thing especially if they use
store-bought whipped topping which is not even food in fact if you set that in
front of me I would look you right in the eye and say bless your heart which
down south is not a compliment so personally I think this is much much
better baked with the meringue on top but anyway that's it my take on southern
style baked banana pudding the stuff is fairly fast and easy to make and
beautiful to look at not to mention one of those desserts are really warm sure
from the inside out whether you eat it warm or not so whether you're an actual
southerner or possibly former southerner like me or you just want to eat dessert
like one I really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to food wishes
calm for all the ingredient amounts and more fo as usual and as always
enjoy
you