The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Banana Pudding

A few months ago, I accompanied Martin to Fresno for a Baptist Foundation meeting. While the men did their manly things, we womenfolk socialized all day. These ladies were sweet and welcoming but it was hard not to feel like an outsider, as they all meet together regularly and know each other's families and stories. Each one typifies the good Baptist wife....as they should and as I hope I do. When you're the outsider, looking in, it's hard not to stereotype them in rather funny ways. As for me, I went away referring to them as the Bapford Wives. Every one of them nicer, and more genteel, and more hospitable, and more...more than the next!

On the menu that day was a banana pudding for dessert. OK, sign me up! I love banana pudding, though I'd never actually made it myself. And why would I have need to, as long as I remained a Baptist and continued going to all the potlucks and dinners that are so a part of our cultural heritage? Let's face it - when folks like Betty Hull, Lettie Keyes, Iris Bachmann, and Nancy Mason are serving up those big crystal bowls of pudding with vanilla wafers, there's no sense in me trying to outdo them, in tastiness.

This recipe was different - and you could tell right off the bat that it was, because the signature vanilla wafers had been replaced by some kind of square cookie. (I would later learn they were Pepperidge Farm Chessmen.) Much as I love the traditional recipe, I had to admit this new variety was downright delicious - and no wonder, it turned out be Paula Deen's "Not Yo Mama's Banana Pudding" Like Paula would ever whip up something that wasn't sinfully yummy.

As with the rest of the wives, I took a copy of the recipe, and then promptly forgot about it until I wanted something to take to one of Iris' recent get-togethers. Making the pudding turned out to be wonderfully easy with spectacular results. Or so I was told. Countless people came up to tell me the recipe was the best banana pudding they'd ever eaten. Brooke literally licked the entire 9X13 pan CLEAN. Penny couldn't have done a more thorough job getting every last morsel of the pudding cleaned up.

Fresh on the heady success of that batch of the pudding, I decided to do another pan for the Senior Choir bash. As I was mounding the Cool whip/cream cheese/sweetened condensed milk layer into the pan, it seemed a bit more pale in color than I remembered from the first batch but, chalking it up to bad eyesight, memory or both, I finished smoothing that layer on and then painstakingly applied all the cookies to the top. Way to go, me! Pudding chilling in the refrigerator and still plenty of time to clean up before heading out the door.

That is, until I noticed the bowl with the pudding mixture, still sitting on the counter. The really dark yellow pudding mixture that, when added to the white cool whip etc. would've produced the creamy yellow color I was remembering. What to do?

Picture this klutzy cook having to take off every one of the chessmen cookies, scoop out as much of the coolwhip mixture as possible and then add the pudding to that, before replacing it over the bananas. Not pretty! When reapplied, the cookies had this kind of messy look, with white glop visible on the sides and tops. If you looked sideways through the glass pan, the pudding appeared to be made up of numerous layers - the bottom cookie layer, the bananas, a white layer, the yellow layer, and then more cookies.

Let's face it - worse things could happen than getting a bite of cool whip mixed with sweetened condensed milk and cream cheese. The seniors ate my pudding and some even commented on how much they liked it. But, I'd have to say, it was definitely not my finest moment in the kitchen!