Zoë's Baking Academy: Banana Pudding
Join me for a YouTube Live today!
The quintessential southern dessert is found on the back of the box of Nilla wafers. You can certainly use Nilla brand wafers for this banana pudding and there will be no judgment and it will taste just like you remember when you ate it as a kid. OR you can make your own vanilla wafer cookies (I used Stella Parks’s recipe from her book, BraveTart) and be so glad you did. When you assemble it you can make this in one large glass jar or in individual servings.
Please join me TODAY at 1 p.m. central on YouTube Live where I’ll make my Banana Pudding recipe and you can ask me your questions. I hope to see you there!
Zoë’s Baking Academy Details
To participate in the challenge: Before March 31, make my Banana Pudding or my Banana Cream Cake (paid subscriber exclusive below). Don’t forget to snap a photo and/or video.
Show us your bake: Tag me (@zoebakes) in an in-feed post on Instagram or Facebook (it’s hard to track Stories and we may miss them) and use the hashtag #zoebakesacademy and/or #zoebakes. If you don’t use social media or your account is private, you can still participate! Send an email to stephani@zoebakes.com with a photo to let us know you’re in.
Extra credit (and an extra chance to win!): Rate and review the recipe at ZoëBakes.com for an additional entry into the giveaway! Paid subscribers who make the Banana Cream Cake will automatically get an extra entry.
Winners: We’ll randomly draw one winner at the beginning of April. The winner will receive a signed copy of Zoë Bakes Cookies OR Zoë Bakes Cakes—your choice!! US addresses only.
Tips & Tricks for Banana Pudding
When making the pastry cream, you need to temper the eggs to get them to the same temperature of the hot milk in the pan, so they won’t curdle. This is done by adding a little amount of the hot liquid to the eggs until they are warm. This prevents them from scrambling when they hit the pot.
Keep whisking the pastry cream the entire time the mixture is cooking to prevent lumps.
The pastry cream will thicken almost immediately when you start cooking it, but it is VERY important to cook out the starch so that it isn’t grainy and so it won’t separate. This takes three minutes of vigorous boiling and whisking. Any less and you may not have the dreamy texture you want.
When you’re getting ready to assemble your pudding, stir the chilled pastry cream until it is smooth, which makes folding in the whipped cream easier.
You can serve this pudding in a couple of different ways:
In a large bowl
In individual serving jars
Topped with softly whipped cream, toasted nuts, and chocolate shavings and/or broken cookies
Topped with Swiss meringue and torched
I urge you to know your audience when you make your whipped cream topping because if you’ve ever seen season 1, episode 2 of my show, Zoë Bakes, you’ll know there wasn’t enough sweetness for my adorable little neighbor friend when I served her this pudding and she let me know all about it! You can whisk in a teaspoon of confectioners’ sugar just before topping your pudding.
Exclusive: Banana Cream Cake
This cake is a touch lighter than its banana bread cousin, yet it still has all the banana flavor; it’s just a bit more refined. I like to bake this in a sheet pan and top it with pastry cream, fresh bananas, and perfectly whipped cream. It’s like a cake version of the famous banana cream pie. I like the cake with nuts, but then half of my family won’t touch it, so only on occasion do I risk mutiny and add them.