Spreading Beauty Through Baking: “The Best Banana Pudding"

The best summer desserts are refrigerator desserts. 

“First aid to the harried hostess is…. Refrigerator cake prepared ahead of time.” 250 Luscious Refrigerator Desserts (1954) 

 My favorite refrigerator dessert is banana pudding, and living in the South has given me plenty of opportunity to eat tons of this yummy stuff. 

I’ve heard it said “You can’t swing a dead cat in a Southern BBQ joint without hitting a bowl of banana pudding”. I have the typical Southern sweet tooth so I’ll eat a big bowl of banana pudding any day.

It’s a great dessert for summer because you don’t have to turn your oven on, it can be made ahead of time and it is well suited for large crowds.  You can even make it in individual mason jars for easy packing in the cooler to take to the park or beach for your Fourth of July picnic. 

What could be more Southern then eating banana pudding out of a Mason jar?  By the way you don’t have to be in the South to make and enjoy banana pudding. 

A note on bananas: for this recipe you want them ripe but not overripe. They should be yellow with some brown spots, soft but not mushy. To slow down the ripening process you can cover the stem of the bananas with plastic wrap which limits the amount of oxygen the stem receives and can keep bananas fresh.  If your bananas are perfectly ripe but you aren’t planning to make the pudding for a few days, stick them in the fridge, this will halt the ripening process for a few days. The skins may turn brown/black but the banana will be fine.

This recipe comes from The Complete Magnolia Bakery Cookbook, which you can find here. This is a lovely cookbook with some very approachable homey desserts including their most popular bakery item, vanilla cupcakes. This banana pudding is their second most popular and is the best recipe for banana pudding I have made. 

Magnolia’s Famous Banana Pudding

• One 14- ounce can sweetened condensed milk
•  1 ½ cups ice cold water 
•  One 3.4-ounce package Jell-O brand instant vanilla pudding mix
•  3 cups heavy cream
•  One 12-ounce box Nabisco Nilla Wafers
•  4 cups sliced ripe bananas

 In a small bowl, on medium speed of an electric mixer, beat together the sweetened condensed milk and water until well combined, about 1 minute. Add the pudding mix and beat well, about 2 minutes more. Cover and refrigerate for 3-4 hours or overnight, before continuing. It is very important to allow the proper amount of time for the pudding mixture to set. 

 In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Gently fold the pudding mixture into the whipped cream until well blended and no streaks of pudding remain. 

 To assemble the dessert, select a large wide bowl (preferably glass) with a 4-5 quart capacity. Arrange one-third of the wafer to cover the bottom of the bowl, overlapping if necessary, then one-third of the bananas and one-third of the pudding. Repeat the layering twice more, garnishing with additional wafers or wafer crumbs on the top layer of the pudding. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and allow to chill in the refrigerator for 4 hours- or up to 8 hours, but no longer!- before serving. 

Serves 12-15

P.S the recipe says to consume within 8 hours, which stresses me out thinking I have to eat it within 8 hours. But it’s not really true banana pudding should keep up to 3 days per my internet research but I would enjoy it within 24 hours of making it

Spreading Beauty Through Baking Series is brought to you by Lyndsay Weyers who works as a Pediatrician in North Carolina but has a passion for good food and delicious baked goods. She spends her free time with her husband (Dr. Weyers) traveling, exploring and eating exotic food and when at home enjoys organizing her ever expanding cookbook library and trying new things in the kitchen.