Banana Pudding

Start with the room temperature cream cheese.

Mix in the sweetened condensed milk.

Then add the instant pudding mix. Once this is thoroughly blended, add the milk (per instant pudding instructions). Put in refrigerator to “set” for a few hours.

Once pudding is firm, mix in 1/4th of the cool whip. Don’t blend thoroughly. Mixed in lightly with a swirled appearance is fine.

The cool whip makes the pudding mixture more spreadable (as I found out once when I tried to leave out the cool whip).

Now you are ready to assemble the layers in a 9 x 12 baking dish.

Slice 2-3 bananas for the bottom layer. Cover with 1/2 the pudding mix. Put down a thin layer of plain cool whip. Top with crumbled vanilla wafers.

Rinse and repeat (just kidding, only repeat).

Line the finished product with whole vanilla wafers. If you want crispy wafers in the pudding, don’t assemble until the last minute. Seriously, it’s my most common question… “How do you keep the wafers crunchy?”

Don’t assemble until the last minute.