Non-floral Magnolia: More Bananas!
Alternatively: the time of corona flattens the curve outside but fattens the curve inside 😬
It is indeed the weekend and I’ll get right to the good news: I submitted my thesis!! Not gonna lie, the quarantine has led to a general decrease in my motivation to do schoolwork. Honestly, it’s reduced my motivation to do anything except 1) find creative ways to leave the house and 2) make new dishes! The satisfaction of submitting a 25-page thesis that I’d been putting off for way too long definitely injected a new dose of desperately needed motivation, and I’m trying my best to ride this wave of momentum through the end of the semester. With the thesis out of the way, there are 3 final projects and 2 final exams to get through. We got this!
Discussing college and the restrictions of quarantine with my sister, the topic naturally shifted to the food she missed in New York (she goes to school in Manhattan). There was the halal cart stationed literally right outside her dorm, the dollar-slice giant pizza shop, a bagel joint, typical Manhattan brunch, etc. etc. (you get the idea). But then we came to my favorite part of whenever I visit her in the Upper West Side: Magnolia Bakery’s classic banana pudding!
Magnolia Bakery itself is pure bliss. It’s an iconic NYC bakery lodged in the trendy Upper West Side, and while not in the Upper East Side, Blair and Serena would look just as perfectly at home at Magnolia as on the Met steps (it’s a Gossip Girl reference, please go to Netflix and start watching if you didn’t get it). Not too long ago I found out that Magnolia had opened a Boston location in Quincy Market, and every so often when we craved that banana pudding, we could take a drive and get it immediately. Of course, in this. COVID-19 world, that is neither safe nor possible. So, I took matters into my own hands, and re-created the original: introducing my rendition of the famed classic banana pudding straight from the source - thank you to the creators of The Magnolia Bakery Cookboook!
Seeing as the recipe came directly out of the cookbook, I had high hope. I had even higher hopes seeing that there were only five ingredients: bananas (duh), heavy whipping cream, instant vanilla pudding mix, sweetened condensed milk, and Nilla wafers. Better yet: there is no use of a stove or oven required at any point in the process. It’s a lot of mixing things together and layering them into this delicacy, which I have no problem with whatsoever. That being said, if you have an electric mixer, I would highly recommend using it. I do not own an electric mixer, so my arms were pretty sore after whipping the cream. Eh it’s fine, I could use the strength training given the absence of a gym at the moment :/
Making this dessert myself also revealed how exactly Magnolia gets their pudding flavor and texture so consistent. Before chilling, layers of Nilla wafers, bananas, and then the pudding/cream/milk mixture are created and then repeated thrice, as seen above. The result after a bunch of chilling? Soft Nilla wafers that blend with the banana and the vanilla pudding to create a diverse yet soft texture. I also realized how much bananas it takes to create this: I went through 5! No wonder the banana flavor is so rich.
How’d I do? Did I live up to the Magnolia legacy? Unclear, so I better take another bite…
