Banana Pudding

I am up at six in the morning, not because I am one of those horrible perky morning-people that everyone loves to hate, but because soon I am going to be on my way to an Open House at the Louisville campus of Sullivan University. In case you don't know, Sullivan has one of the best culinary programs in the country. Getting my degree in baking and pastry arts at Sullivan would be amazing, but it's so damn expensive. Oh well - here's hoping!

Today's endeavor is Banana Pudding, courtesy of allrecipes.com. It was my husband's birthday, and this is his favorite, so being the great wife that I am, I made this for him.

Beautiful, yes?

Instead of a small rectangular dish, like the one shown in the photo on the recipe's page, I chose to prepare mine in a punchbowl. Unfortunately, I was not aware that it would not fill the punchbowl to the top, so it appears slightly underwhelming. In the future, I will have to make a larger quantity, or use a different dish to serve it in.

The recipe calls for a can of sweetened condensed milk and three cups of cold milk. I did not follow these instructions. You see, on the side of the box of instant vanilla pudding mix that the recipe also calls for, I happened to find another recipe for banana pudding, similar, but not quite the same. Jello's recipe for banana pudding calls for two and a half cups of cold milk, but no sweetened condensed milk. So what I did was add two and a half cups of milk, but some of that was condensed and some was cold. I used a can of condensed and made up the difference with cold milk to total two and a half cups. Does that make sense? I tried to explain it clearly, did I only succeed in bogging it up?

Also, I did not reserve half of the Cool Whip to spread on top. I just mixed the whole container into the pudding. I put a layer of Nilla Wafers on the bottom of the punchbowl, then a layer of banana slices, then a layer of pudding. Then I did repeated. I sprinkled the top with crushed Nilla Wafers to give it that "elegant" look.

Nice.

My husband loved it. He said the texture was more whipped than most banana puddings he'd had. He said usually they are sort of runny. But that would be because I put the whole damn container in there. He wasn't complaining though. Cool Whip makes everything better.

While simple to make, I consider this a definite Success to mark off my list. Oh yes, I have a List of 100 Things Every Baker Must Make Before They Die. I got this idea from Brown Eyed Baker. She's brilliant.

See? I give credit where credit's due. I don't want to get in trouble.

Anyway, I think I'm going to post My 100 List for everyone to see, though I must warn you it's only at 98 currently. Taking requests! ;)