Rich and Gooey Chocolate Banana Pudding

WDC NEWS 6 STAFF 19 hours ago

1 5 minutes read

Why It Works

Bringing the pastry cream to a boil deactivates the yolk’s starch-dissolving amylase, ensuring it doesn’t become runny as it sits.
Adding crème fraîche to the pastry cream balances the chocolate’s bitterness and adds richness.
Finishing the pastry cream with butter while it’s still hot adds shine and flavor.
Chilling the pudding for at least eight hours allows flavors to meld and wafers to soften.

There’s something endlessly comforting about banana pudding—all those soft, velvety layers, the sweet, ripe bananas, and the warmth of vanilla. Chocolate pudding offers its own form of comfort: rich, silky, and, when made well, deeply chocolatey. This recipe asks the internet-old question, ¿Por qué no los dos?, by combining the classic Southern dessert with a chocolate-pudding twist.

This is the kind of dessert our favorite aunts brought to potlucks—layered in deep glass bowls and crowned with whipped cream that’s been spooned on with joyful abandon. But it’s just as perfect for a cozy night in, lazily spooning it from a bowl on the couch, or for those sun-drenched days when turning on the oven feels like a crime.

Serious Eats/ Morgan Hunt Glaze

How to Make Silky Chocolate Pastry Cream

Because so much of this dessert’s charm hinges on its silky texture, Craig Ruff from our Birmingham, Alabama, test kitchen substitutes velvety homemade pastry cream for store-bought pudding to elevate the dish.

To make a smooth and lustrous custard, Craig starts by whisking egg yolks with sugar and cornstarch until pale and fluffy, then carefully tempers them with hot milk to avoid curdling. One crucial step: bringing the custard to a full, bubbly boil. This not only activates the thickening power of the cornstarch but also deactivates amylase, an enzyme in egg yolks that would otherwise break down the starch over time, leading to a runny, weepy cream.

Once the custard reaches just the right thickness, chocolate and butter are whisked in, adding richness, a satiny finish, and just enough bitterness to balance the sweetness of the bananas and wafers. A touch of crème fraîche sneaks in a gentle tang, brightening the whole mixture. Stirred into the warm custard, it becomes silky and balanced.

Finally, the pudding is strained through a fine-mesh sieve for extra smoothness, then chilled to prevent further cooking, with plastic wrap pressed directly onto the surface to prevent a skin from forming.

Why You Need to Wait

Once you’ve assembled the dessert, it’s understandable that you’d want to dig right in. But, as the marketing geniuses at Heinz Ketchup and Guinness beer have drilled into our heads, the best things come to those who wait. A few hours in the fridge are essential for all the components in the pudding to blur together—in the best possible way.

As the pudding sits, the pastry cream sets just enough to hold its shape, the ripe fragrance of the bananas infuses throughout, and the wafers soften into something spoonable and dreamy. A final flourish of whipped cream finishes it, just the way it’s meant to be.

This recipe was developed by Craig Ruff; the headnote was written by Laila Ibrahim.