Southern Banana Pudding

J requested banana pudding for a dessert. I have made banana pudding years ago and didn't remember how to do. For me, banana pudding was supposed to be a chilled "non-baked" dessert that had layers of fresh banana, commercial vanilla wafers and custard cream, topped with whipped cream. I searched a decent recipe online and found one for Southern Banana Pudding. Shockingly the recipe challenged my idea of banana pudding. According to the recipe, the output was going to be topped with baked meringue and served warm, which was supposed to be a traditional Southern style. It actually sounded nice and I adapted a recipe, halving all the ingredients to scale down.

I hadn't expect the situation that I couldn't find vanilla wafers in the UK. In the US, you see a yellow box of Nabisco's vanilla-flavored, wafer-style cookies,"Nilla" at any grocery store, so I thought I could do so here. Nope. Actually I had Nilla only once years ago when I made banana pudding. I really don't remember anything about Nilla - taste, texture, size. At least I could guess Nilla has vanilla flavor based on its name. I picked Marks and Spencer's All Butter Viennese Swirls that were light and delicate biscuits with hint of vanilla as an alternative.

The recipe called for some flour for custard cream. Sometimes flour brings a kind of chalky taste in custard cream especially when the cream isn't cooked well. To avoid it, I replaced half of flour with corn starch and made sure to cook custard cream very well. I also added some rum in the cream. Who doesn't like the combination of banana and rum?

I used my new hand-held mixer to make fluffy meringue. Well done!

Oops, Did I cooked meringue too long? Well, it was much better than under-cooked, though. Nobody wants under-cooked egg white, I believe. Actually it wasn't bad. Well-baked meringue added a caramel-like flavor and a lovely crunchy texture.

The result was lovely. I might prefer the true Southern banana pudding to a chilled version with whipped cream.