Baked Banana Pudding - Food Wishes

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

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,048,521

Rating: 4.9336543 out of 5

Keywords: Banana, Pudding, Baked, southern, warm, dessert, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, easy, sweet, fruit

Id: 1lj0dbUwRHU

Length: 9min 6sec (546 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/IsMyAccount]

Any recipe that gets the ole-tappa-tappa must be upvoted. It is like a law or something , no?