The Dad's Day Pudding

The Father’s Day Banana Pudding was a struggle. I (Tracy again) am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to preparing food. If you know me than you’ve probably already guessed that.  I was attempting to not only make an old family favorite, something I’ve been making for more than 20 years and can probably make blind folded, but to also sneak some protein into my ailing father’s diet. My goal here was to produce some wonderful pudding that is one of the hubbie’s favorites and get my dad to eat something of value – something he doesn’t do a lot of these days.

So I decided to sneak in some protein powder. I have some in the house from my previous diet but have never used it to cook with. I tasted it first on my finger to be sure that I remembered that it was tasteless, I didn’t want to add anything unpleasant to my famous banana pudding, but rather I wanted Dad to eat it with a reckless abandon that I have not seen in him lately.

So my pudding was cooking beautifully when I added in a quarter cup of soy protein powder and all hell broke loose. Not really, but the pudding  became very gritty as the stuff did not seem to want to dissolve.  After beating it fruitlessly with a whip, I added some more liquid and broke out the emulsion blender. That did the trick but now I had a thin, frothy mess, ala Marcel from Top Chef. No worries, it’s a pudding, it will thicken in the frig. Wrong.

At some point, peeking in on the pudding, Rob pointed out that it was not coming together as I’d hoped and suggested freezing it before delivering to Dad or sampling here at the house.  The perfectionist in me kicked into high gear. I drained all of the bananas and Nilla wafers, reserved, and then put the thin runny custard makings back into a pot, heated and started to stir. Still not coming together, I added an egg yolk and then a few moments later, VOILÀ! I had pudding again! YEAH, I’d saved the day!!!

Now reassembled, it’s all ready to head over to Dad’s where I’m hoping he’ll never have a clue that I added in all that protein. Unless he actually reads our blog, and then it’s all over….

Page Family Banana Pudding 

(sans extra protein....)

About 3.5 tablespoons of flour

1 cup of sugar

Pinch of salt

3 egg yolks

3 cups of milk

1 tablespoon or vanilla

6 bananas

1 box of Nilla’s

In heavy bottom pot, use whisk to mix flour, sugar and salt. Beat egg yolks, add milk into egg yolks and then mix liquid into the dry ingredients in the pot. Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened. When reaches a nice thickened consistency, add vanilla and turn off heat.

Layer Nilla wafers, slice bananas and spoon pudding over, lasagna style. You should be able to get about three layers. Chill until you can’t stand waiting anymore and dig in!

The original recipe called for the whites to be turned into a meringue for the top. I prefer beating some heavy whipping cream and adding just a little bit of sugar or Spenda and then using this for the topping. It’s great with no topping as well.