Banana Pudding

It may sound strange, but until very recently, I had never had banana pudding. To many this is a classic dish they grew up eating, especially in the south. It just always seemed a little icky to me. 

I don;t like banana flavored things and I am not a huge fan of soggy cookies. Thus, I went through life avoiding this jiggly pudding dish. 

Until I ate it on accident. I was a at a potluck and saw a beautiful dish covered in whipped cream. I took a large helping and tried it out.

It was fluffy pudding heaven with bananas inside!

I requested the recipe for it and made it myself. It is truly delicious. Not only does this taste pretty darn good, it also comes together very quickly. It's also great for summer since it doesn't require any baking. 

Ingredients

1 box of instant vanilla pudding

1 3/4 cup cold milk

1 tub of whipped topping, divided

4 bananas, sliced

1 to 1 1/2 boxes of vanilla wafers 

I bought two boxes of vanilla wafers since I knew I would eat some along the way :)

Dump the box of pudding into a large bowl and add the milk. Mix with an electric mixer for 1 to 2 minutes or until the mixture becomes a thick custard.

 

Fold in half of the whipped topping into the pudding mixture. Make sure you mix this gently so it stays nice and fluffy.

In a 9 X 13 dish, make a layer of the vanilla wafers on the bottom. I like to use the broken ones to fill in the small spaces. Place one layer of the bananas on top of the wafers.

Spread about 1/2 of the fluffy pudding mixture over the cookies and bananas. 

On top of the fluffy pudding layer, add more vanilla wafers and bananas. Don;t worry if you mess this up. I was watching a movie and reversed the order of the cookies and bananas. No one would be the wiser.

For the last layer, I add just one more layer of the wafer cookies since they are my favorite part of this whole yummy delight. On top of the 3rd layer of cookies, carefully smooth over the remaining whipped topping. 

Take 10 more cookies and crush them in your hand like Godzilla. Spread these tasty crumbs over the whipped cream for a pretty finish.