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SCENE 1
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| [at the oven] Mission Vanilla Wafer gets underway with a 350 degree oven, one rack upper third, one rack bottom third. |
350 Degrees |
[at the dining table] Like so many other classic cookies, our
vanilla wafers will be prepared via the "creaming" method, which means that
there are three distinct teams of software. And here we have the sugar/fat team.
Those always go together. We have four ounces, or we'll use four ounces of
unsalted butter, one large chicken egg, and 3.5 ounces by weight of sugar. And
you get extra points if you use vanilla sugar. You can learn about that at
foodnetwork.com.
Now we move to the wet team. Not a big team, but critical.
One tablespoon of milk, whole, not skim, and four teaspoons of real vanilla
extract, single strength, if you please. Our last team, of course, the dry team.
And for that we will require seven ounces, again, by weight, of all-purpose
flour, three-quarters of a teaspoon of baking powder, and one-half teaspoon of
kosher salt.
| Now that we have all of our software amassed, we can move into the creaming stage. For that, we will require, of course, a creaming device like this mixer. So the butter goes in. Room temperature, please. It always has to be room temperature for the creaming process, or else you're just going to waste time. And the sugar will go in. Now medium speed for two minutes, and you're going to have to stop halfway through and scrape down the bowl, I guarantee. |
4 Ounce Unsalted Butter, Room Temperature 3.5 Ounce Vanilla Sugar |
While that is working, let's go ahead and sift the dry goods. Now you might ask, why? Well, I'll tell you. Because if you aerate all this powder, you are going to have a much easier time working this into the batter. And the paper plate? I like that, because it's a lot easier to deliver these goods into that mixer without making a huge mess.
| Now when the creaming is done, you'll know, because you'll have a nice, homogenized, light-yellow appearance. At that time, and only at that time, you can add your egg. Now we're basically making an emulsion here, and emulsions take time. So let this work, I'd say, for about another 30 seconds, or until the egg has essentially disappeared. | 1 Large Egg |
| At that point, you can turn down the speed and go for the wet works, which we have here. Those go in, also nice and slow. And let them work until you basically don't see a lot of moisture still moving around in the bottom of the bowl. |
1 Tbs. Whole Milk + 4 tsp. Vanilla Extract |
| Then, and only then, it will be time to move for your dry goods. And you'll see this is where the paper plate really comes into its own. Just bend it like this, like you're eating a hot dog, and slowly tap it in. And if stuff starts, you know, crawling up the side of the bowl, just scrape it down with a spatula. Take your time. |
7 Ounces All-Purpose Flour + ¾ tsp. Baking Powder + ½ tsp. Kosher Salt |
[at the refrigerator] A 10-minute chill will make the dough infinitely easier to work with.
Bananas are by far the most popular fruit in the United States.
GUEST: Thing
Ulysses S. Grant
Robert E. Lee
And now is the time on Good Eats when we scoop. Start by lining two half-sheet pans with parchment paper and
then scoop on the goods. Now I'm using a one-teaspoon disher here. It's the
easiest device to deliver this very sticky dough, and I usually start in the
corners to kind of hold things down. And then basically build yourself a grid, 5
by 7 pieces, so that you've got 35 cookies. Then just use the heel of your hand
to slightly mash them down.
[at the oven] Now in my oven, golden-brown and delicious is
exactly 18 minutes away. But in your oven, it may take 15 to 20, depending. Oh, and
remember to rotate the pans halfway through the process for evenness' sake.
Now when the cookies are done, just slide the parchments onto
cooling racks and keep your mitts off them for half an hour.
THING: [tries to
reach for a cookie]
AB: [slaps him away] No! They're for the pudding!
T: [reaches again, and succeeds]
It's generally held that trifle-like banana puddings—that is, specimens assembled from a cooked-then-chilled custard and topped with whipped cream—are favored by those living in the northern United States.
ULYSSES S. GRANT: A fact which testifies to the strong British
influence and our hardy, hard-working cuisine.
ROBERT E. LEE: While in the south, where hospitality is a way of life, we
prefer our 'nana puddin' topped with a light meringue, baked and served warm.
AB: Which of course reflects strong French influence.
REL: Ah, well, do remember that bananas first came to the south, through New
Orleans and the great port of Charleston.
AB: Oh! Oh! Which experienced a vast influx of French Huguenots during the 17th
century.
USG: Well, then, explain to me why it is that the factory which makes these
wafers, and which has been based for a long time in New York City ...
AB & REL: New York City?
USG: Ah, yes. ... continues to print on the box a recipe for baked banana pudding
with meringue.
REL: Well, I believe I can answer that question.
USG: Well, do.
REL: Well, you see, Sir, the majority of the cookies of which you speak are sold
in the south, where they must pander to our considerable and, dare I say,
superior culinary constitutions.
USG: [laughs] Well, perhaps I should just have my close, personal friend,
William Tecumseh Sherman, come down there, and teach you boys a thing or two
about the name of the word superiority!
REL: Well, bring him down ...
USG: Oh, yeah, I will.
REL: ... and we'll be glad to serve him a heaping helping of southern
hospitality.
USG: Oh, I got your hospitality right here ...
AB: No, come on.
USG: ... you rebellious jackanape. Put 'em up. Come on, let's go.
REL: I'll teach you a thing or two about fisticuffs, you red-nosed rum barrel.
USG: Rum barrel? Oh, that's it, Lee. I've had it with your snipes. Come on.
AB: You guys got to ...
USG: Well, come back here. Where you going? [the argument never comes to blows,
but adjourns off-camera]
Sorry about that, food fans. But folks can get kind of passionate about their
pudding. Me? I think there's room on the table for baked and refrigerator
versions.
Let us consider now the software. Both versions of our pudding will require
dairy, sugar, eggs, and starch, as well as identical amounts of vanilla wafers,
bananas, lemon juice, vanilla extract, and salt. The odd men out, a little bit
of butter and banana liqueur, which we will be using in our cold version. And
since that one takes a little bit longer to assemble, it's a good place to
start.
Although most stirred custards are cooked in a double boiler in order to protect
the fragile egg proteins from over coagulation, i.e. scrambling, we don't need
no stinking protection. Well, we do, but we shall find it elsewhere.
| [at the stovetop] So combine three quarters of a cup of sugar, three tablespoons of cornstarch, and one dose of the salt, a quarter teaspoon, in your saucier. |
¾ Cup Sugar 3 Tbs. Cornstarch ¼ tsp. Kosher Salt |
| Now when combined, work in two eggs and one egg yolk, whisking for 30 seconds. Now most custards eschew the use of egg whites, but I think they make for a lighter final product, at least in the refrigerated version. |
2 Whole Eggs + 1 Egg Yolk |
| Now follow the eggs with two cups of whole milk and whisk aggressively for another 30 seconds. | 2 Cups Whole Milk |
Then and only then, you can bring on the heat, medium-low. We want to slowly bring this mixture to 172 to 180 degrees. That is the sweet spot where the starches swell to their optimum, um, swellage, and the egg proteins coagulate to the point where they will, well, be firm but not hard once refrigerated. Now a lot of popular recipes call for simply cooking this until "thick". That's not good enough. 172 to 180, if you please.
| Okay, 178. That's good enough for me. So kill the heat, and then introduce the one ingredient on the parts list that is truly unique to this application, butter. Three tablespoons cut into six pieces. Whisk them in one at a time. Slowly melting some of the fat into the mix will lubricate the gel that we've created with that starch, making it more spreadable. And it'll also provide a lovely sheen, and, of course, butter tastes good. There. |
3 Tbs. Unsalted Butter, Chilled |
| Last, but by no means least, the half teaspoon of vanilla extract. Which being mostly alcohol, boils at a relatively low temperature. So I typically hold it back until the custard is cooled a few degrees. | ½ tsp. Vanilla Extract |
Now this next part is important.
As the custard continues to cool, it's going to form a skin because of the
starch. To prevent that, we have to eliminate surface evaporation. So take
yourself a 16 1/2" x 12 1/2" piece of parchment. Fold over one side. Then use a
ruler and remove the excess piece thusly. [makes a square out of it] Then just start folding the triangle
over on itself four or five times until you've got something that looks like
this. Measure five inches from the pointy end, and snip off the remains thusly.
And look! You've made yourself a 10-inch parchment disk. which you can apply
directly to the surface of the custard.
[at the refrigerator] Refrigerate your custard until it drops below 45 degrees
Fahrenheit. In my refrigerator, that'll take about two hours.
The first printed recipe for pastry cream dates back to
"Le Patissier Francois",
published in France in 1690.
| Now the wafers in refrigerator-based banana puddings often suffer a dearth of moisture. But we can fix that by borrowing a note from the trifle. This is a bottle of banana liqueur. This is four ounces of said liqueur being slowly poured onto 45 of our homemade vanilla wafers. Let these soak for ten minutes. Not only will you have a serious increase in flavor, but your moisture problems, they are history. |
4 Ounces Banana Liqueur 45 Homemade Vanilla Wafers |
| All right, with that done we turn our attention to the three bananas. Alright, peel and slice these into quarter-inch rounds, and then toss with the lemon juice. The acid here will smash the enzyme that teams up with oxygen and phenyls to cause browning. |
3 Bananas, Peeled & Sliced ¼ Inch Rounds 1 Tbs. Freshly Squeezed Lemon Juice |
| Now the last thing we have to build is our topping, whipped cream. So one cup of very cold whipping cream goes into the mixer bowl, along with two tablespoons of plain old sugar. Now very slowly put the spurs to that so you don't just sling everything all over the kitchen. And in a couple of minutes, you will have stiff peaks that look exactly like this. And believe me, we'll want to use every bit of this. |
1 Cup Heavy Whipping Cream 2 Tbs. Sugar |
All right, now we build. You can, of course, use a trifle dish like this. It's
pretty. But if you're like me, you'll just go with a plain old bowl in the 1.5
quart range.
Now start with just a small layer of pudding right in the bottom to
just kind of hold things. That's going to be your foundation. No more than maybe
a third of a cup down there. Then start layering on the wafers. And don't
overlap them too much. Follow that with some bananas, more pudding, and keep
building until you have three layers of bananas, three layers of cookies, four
layers of pudding all day, and, of course, the whipped cream up on top.
[at the refrigerator] Half an hour of chilling should give the custard and
cookies time to cozily coalesce. In the meantime, we turn due south for pudding
number two.
Of course, it's kind of warm in the south, so we'll crank our hot box to 400
degrees, standard bake mode. Next, separate four eggs. Now we're going to cook
with the yolks right away, but we're going to be whipping the whites later, so I
like to sequester each white as I go to make sure I don't get any yolk in it,
and then you can add them back into the whole. That'll keep everybody happy.
| Combine one-half cup of sugar, a third of a cup of all-purpose flour, and the very same quarter teaspoon of kosher salt as before in the very same saucier. |
½ Cup Sugar 1/3 Cup All-Purpose Flour ¼ tsp. Kosher Salt |
| Now when combined, whisk in the yolks. Since there's not as much moisture in them as before, the mixture's going to get pretty tight. You're going to have to use some elbow grease, as they used to say. | 4 Egg Yolks |
| Now we're going to add our dairy. In this case, two cups of half-and-half. Now this is pretty stiff, so loosen it up first by just adding, say, half a cup. Otherwise, you're going to slosh everything all over the kitchen. There. Now you can add the rest. Okay, since it contains two to three times more fat than whole milk, half-and-half will give us a smooth, silky texture in this version of the pudding. Now continue to whisk now over medium-low heat until you hit that magical realm of 172 to 180 degrees. | 2 Cups Half & Half |
Now you might be asking, "why use flour instead of cornstarch?" Well, cornstarch is all starch, which means, well, approximately 25% amylose and 75% amylopectin molecules. This combination is especially potent when a light texture is desired in a product that will be served cold. Flour, on the other hand, is only mostly starch, around 70%, the rest being protein, milk sugars, and malted wheat, which is added for the benefit of yeast. And although we're not going to be using yeast here, we, can certainly, profit from the fact that that flavor marries well with bananas, of all things. And I always prefer flour as a thickener when the mixture is to be served warm.
| All right, we finally reach 177. Good. So I'm going to kill the heat and add the vanilla extract. Just a half teaspoon. I'll just eyeball it. There. And now we build just as before, starting with a little bit of the pudding mixture, the custard, as a base. Then start with the cookies, and notice I'm not overlapping them. We need room for the pudding to kind of glue things together. Follow that with bananas, and keep on building. | ½ tsp. Vanilla Extract |
Since the custard is still hot, the bananas will essentially cook, lending both moisture and sweetness to the whole. That is how we got away with less sugar and skipped the liqueur soak all together. Next up, the meringue.
Bananas in space? Banana pudding was served aboard Apollo 12.
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Time to meringue. So our four reserved egg whites go into the work bowl of the
mixer, along with a pinch of cream of tartar. That's an acid. It will actually
help to denature some of the egg white proteins allowing them to whip easier. Now start this on medium speed, just until it's frothy, then boost it to high, and slowly sprinkle in two tablespoons of sugar. Keep beating until you've got good, stiff peaks. Nice and smooth, like that. Any more than that and it'll be really, really tough to spread. |
4 Egg Whiles 1 Pinch Cream of Tartar 2 Tbs. Sugar |
Now when applying to the pudding, just dump everything right in the middle, and
smooth it all the way to the edges until you've got a good seal. Don't worry
what it looks like.
[at the oven] Bake for 10 minutes at 400, or until the top of the meringue is
nice and brown.
Be sure to let this cool down for at least 15 to 20 minutes before you attempt
to devour. And now, the moment of truth. [tastes both] They are both amazingly
delicious. They are both completely luscious. And yet, they are undeniably
different puddings. It's kind of like, I don't know, dating sisters, only a
whole lot safer, I imagine.
GUEST: Stock Boy
[AB is dresse as a stock boy, and is adding AB BRAND VANILLA WAFERS to the shelves] Whether you were raised on southern baked versions or trifle-esque refrigerator models, any banana pudding is possible, as long as you build upon a foundation of real vanilla wafers.
STOCK BOY: Hey, new guy! Those don't go there!
AB: Um, well, you know, Jerry told me to get these up stat.
SB: You mean Jim.
AB: Did I say "Jerry"? Jim, yeah. I meant Jim.
SB: Jim's deli. He's got no authority over here, okay? I do.
Okay, folks, you'll have to excuse me. I think I've got a little management situation to work out. See you next time on Good Eats.
SB: [picks up
a box and sees the ruse]
AB: Put the box back. Thank you.
Transcribed by Michael Roberts
Proofread by Michael Menninger
Last Edited on 12/06/2010
