The Essential Upgrade for the Best Banana Pudding

The week after I gave birth to my son, my sisters kept my kitchen stocked with an assortment of fun snacks and beverages. While our baby slept, I ate my way through New York City without even leaving my bed, chowing on a whole box of sweet, briny uni sushi, pizza slices from my favorite local joint, Mama’s Too, and many other delicious foods. One day, my youngest sister, Alexis, showed up with Magnolia Bakery’s famous banana pudding. Despite having lived in New York for eight years, I had never eaten it. 

The banana pudding was pretty good, but I was, frankly, underwhelmed. Some of the wafers were still bone-dry, the custard didn’t have the hit of vanilla I wanted, and I knew it had the potential to be better. As I ate the last of it, I made a mental note to develop a more delicious version when I returned to work. After many rounds of testing and tasting, my coworkers and I are confident that the recipe below for banana pudding hits all the right texture and flavor notes, and is the very best version you could make at home.

There are as many approaches to the dessert as there are opinions on it. Some swear by instant pudding mix, and some, including Dolly Parton, serve it baked with a meringue topping. Some people even go so far as to make their own wafers. Ultimately, the dessert can be as fussy or easy as you want it to be—but my ideal pudding is one that’s made with a luscious pastry cream that’s strong on the vanilla, tastes of ripe bananas, and has chilled long enough so the wafers soften and the flavors meld. Read on for my full banana pudding recipe and tips.

Tips for Making Stellar Banana Pudding

Use Real Vanilla—and Make Your Own Pastry Cream

Many banana pudding recipes call for instant pudding mix, which is a quick and easy option for those who don’t want to make custard from scratch. There are some downsides, though. Most of what’s available in stores tastes like artificial vanilla and, because the mix comes formulated for ease, it’s difficult to adjust its flavor or texture. While instant pudding mix is convenient, it’s not that much harder to make custard from scratch, which allows you to customize it to your liking. 

At the beginning of my banana pudding saga, I wondered if a filling like crème legere, which is equal parts vanilla pastry cream and whipped cream, would be ideal. After experimenting with different ratios of vanilla pastry cream to whipped cream, I found that the pastry cream on its own was the most flavorful. Steeping the milk used in the pastry cream with real vanilla—in this case a vanilla bean split and scraped or a teaspoon or pure vanilla paste—helps to infuse the pastry cream with subtly floral notes that complement the banana’s sweetness. And as with many desserts, a touch of salt helps to highlight all these flavors.

In addition to having a better flavor, pastry cream is much silkier than pudding. While some pudding mixes can be stodgy, the pastry cream is simultaneously light and just thick enough to be spoonable and sturdy enough to withstand the weight of the bananas. 

A common pitfall of pastry creams and custards is that they start to weep once they’re made. In this recipe, I’ve avoided that disaster by adequately cooking the pastry cream on the stove and allowing it to bubble for a full minute. This deactivates amylase—an enzyme in egg yolks that dissolves starches and can result in watery sauces—and ensures that the custard for your banana pudding remains rich and silky even after it sits for an extended period of time.

Don’t Shy Away From Store-Bought Nilla Wafers

Mention banana pudding, and chances are someone will bring up Nilla Wafers. Today, the cookie has become such an intrinsic part of banana pudding that it’s rare to come across a recipe that calls for something else. A quick look at the history of the dish, though, tells us that sponge cake was once the norm. While using cake is fine and dandy, what I want is banana pudding—not trifle—complete with wafers and all.

Which brings us to the question: Is it worth making your own wafers for banana pudding? Unlike custard, where there’s a tangible difference between store-bought mix and homemade, the difference between homemade and store-bought cookies, especially when they’re stacked between layers of pastry cream and bananas, is negligible. Unless you want a true baking project where you’re making every single component from scratch, store-bought vanilla wafers work just fine.

Keep the Topping Simple

Listen, I tried topping my banana pudding with meringue and baking it, as well as folding a portion of the pastry cream into whipped cream for a topping. These variations just weren’t for me. I much prefer a cold banana pudding with lightly sweetened soft whipped cream. Sometimes simple is best, and in my tests I found that keeping the whipped cream relatively neutral helps to balance the sweetness of the pastry cream and ripe bananas and adds a pleasant lightness. You could top the banana pudding with crushed up wafers for extra crunch, but the dessert really doesn’t need any garnishing.

Chill the Banana Pudding for at Least Eight Hours

For the best banana pudding, I recommend allowing the assembled dessert (minus the whipped cream topping) to chill for at least eight hours. This gives the vanilla wafers adequate time to soften and allows the flavors to meld, resulting in a more cohesive dessert. If you’re feeling impatient and decide to dig in sooner, you may encounter some dry cookies. A handful of wafers with bananas, pastry cream, and whipped cream is tasty enough but it does not make a banana pudding—the dessert is more than the sum of its parts. Let time do the hard work for you and you’ll end up with what my colleagues—including Megan, our associate editorial director, who’s from the South!—say is the best banana pudding they’ve ever had.