Interlude: Veganizing Banana Pudding

I don't know if banana pudding is a thing in your part of the world. It wasn't something I often had in mine, even before I was vegan, not because of region but because it seemed weird to make one just for myself. I'd make one sometimes, when there were potluck gatherings, and then when I gave up animal products and the needed 'Nilla Wafers weren't vegan, I assumed I'd write off banana pudding forever.

Banana pudding is an American trifle, with layers of vanilla custard or pudding, sliced bananas, and vanilla wafer cookies, all topped with whipped cream (or, if you want to get really fancy, meringue--the baked banana pudding was the show stopper, really). Though you'll find it all over the United States, it's really most popular in the South. The vanilla cookies were, of course, 'Nilla Wafers, which seemed to exist for the sole purpose of being made into banana pudding, akin to the way ladyfingers seem to exist to become tiramisu.

I know I'd found vanilla wafers that were vegan years ago--some store brand, somewhere--which I'd gotten too excited about and proceeded to just eat straight from the box and never bothered with the pudding. I assumed I'd just get more. And then I couldn't find vegan vanilla wafers again for ages, and the point of this very long story is that I think it had been at least a decade since I'd had banana pudding.

One day I was at my local market and spotted their store brand organic vanilla snaps, which looked like vanilla wafers, so I grabbed a box after thinking about it for two solid weeks. They weren't exactly like vanilla wafers, being airy in a way I don't recall the original being, but they would do. They were the right shape and I figured once they were doused in pudding for hours on end they'd become part of the custard just as well.

And so I made banana pudding, a tiny batch with just one banana, about 16 cookies, and a half recipe of a vegan vanilla pudding I found at Picky Eater Blog, though I adjusted things a bit to suit what I had on hand better. Layering the cookies and bananas with the pudding had me giggling because it felt so much like being a little kid. After my pudding had chilled the requisite four hours--although I knew it would be better overnight, I was impatient--I topped a serving with a ridiculously generous dollop of coconut whipped topping and sat down to a memory.

It wasn't the banana pudding of my childhood; probably, it is better, though when you're going for nostalgia "better" isn't necessarily what you're hoping to get. But it was close enough to bring me inordinate joy, and to vow to make more banana pudding in the future.

It's not pretty enough, served this way, for me to want to write a recipe post for it right now. Maybe someday, if I make it in sharable quantities, rather than in a 3-serving version, I will write a recipe post for you. But I wanted to write about it anyway, because there's not a whole lot of joy out there these days, and when we find it, it's worth celebrating.

Here's to banana pudding!