I cannot imagine going to a church potluck and not seeing banana pudding. Maybe it's my age, maybe it's a southern thing, but it just doesn't happen. They were so much a staple of the potluck that I have strong opinions on how a pudding should be prepared - cooked, not instant; vanilla pudding, not banana. I will never forget the first time I tasted a banana pudding made with sour cream. It was the most decadent thing I had ever eaten at that point in my young life. And I fell in love. Sour cream makes for a more complex and rich pudding than the usual sweet, banana flavor. I found this recipe in Josh's grandmother's old cookbook and made it for a family birthday party recently. It was as delicious as I remember and I may just take up the mantle of providing sour cream banana puddings at potlucks...
Ingredients: 3 small boxes of vanilla pudding mix, bananas, vanilla wafers, sour cream, milk, whipped topping
Step 1: The recipe calls for instant pudding pudding BUT I promise you, the kind you have to cook tastes so much better. Prepare pudding according to directions, reducing milk to 5 cups instead of 6. Step 2: mix pudding with sour cream and half of the whipped topping. Step 3: layer the pudding, bananas and wafers in 9x13 dish. I prefer to slice the bananas in circles rather than long slices. I also prefer to layer in this order: pudding, bananas, wafers, pudding bananas, whipped topping, wafers. You can certainly forge your own path in layering the pudding, but that is a great way to do it - trust me! Step 4: refrigerate until ready to serve.
Banana Pudding
Recipe:
3 3.9 oz. boxes of vanilla pudding (cook and serve or instant)
5 c. milk
4-5 ripe bananas
8 oz. sour cream
16 oz. whipped topping
If using cook and serve vanilla pudding, prepare according to directions using 5 cups of milk instead of 6. Combine prepared pudding or pudding mix and milk with sour cream and half of the whipped topping. Layer in 9x13 dish with bananas and vanilla wafers. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Source: Louise Hilton, Brenda Reynolds, & Member, A Southern Bit of Heaven From the Families of Lawings Chapel Baptist Church 1989