Mama Beamon's Homemade Banana Pudding

There are probably a zillion recipes out there for banana pudding. After reviewing some of them, this is what I came up with when my grandfather-in-law requested banana pudding for his birthday last year. When his birthday rolled around again this September...of course he wanted a repeat.

Ingredients:

1 large box instant vanilla pudding

Three ripe bananas

1 1/2 cups cold milk (sorry forgot to include it in the picture)

3/4 box mini nilla wafers

2 cups heavy cream

1 can sweetened condensed milk (do not look at the nutrition information...I repeat, do NOT look at the nutrition information)

1/2 cup lemon juice

Okay, first and foremost, you are going to want to put a metal/glass/ceramic (whatever ya got) bowl in the freezer to chill. You are later going to use this to whip your heavy cream, and a chilled bowl helps.

Slice your bananas and soak them in lemon juice while you prepare the rest of the pudding. This helps stop the bananas from turning a nasty brown color. I find it doesn't stop them completely...but it helps.

Now you are going to mix your milk, condensed milk, and pudding mix in a large bowl. 

Now get your chilled bowl out of the freezer and whip those 2 cups of heavy cream until it's thick and fluffy. Just make sure if your peaks start getting really firm that you stop-or it will turn into a butter-like consistency which is not good for mixing.

                                 This is my cream after I stopped whipping it.

Now fold the cream into the pudding mixture.

When you get it all mixed together, put about 1/3 of the mixture in the bottom of a large bowl and top with a layer of mini wafers and then bananas.

                                                                     (This is my first layer)

Now put more pudding/cream mix on top of this repeat. Repeat one more time until you are finished!

I like this recipe because it's easy, pretty quick, and makes thick and delicious banana pudding that's not overpoweringly banana-y. 

Enjoy!

XoXo,

L