Simple Goodness.

In need of a quick mid-week dessert? I was in Wal-mart picking up a few things tonight and was asked to make banana pudding, I sighed gave them a hard time and told him to go get the ingredients. He came back with Jello instant vanilla pudding, bananas, nilla wafers and *gasp!* cool whip. Really? If I'm going to take a page out of the Semi-Homemade cook book I'm at least going to make my own whipped cream!!

Nilla Wafer Banana Pudding Topped with fresh Whipped Cream
Ingredients:
* Vanilla Pudding- I used Jello Vanilla the big box.
* 3 cups milk
* 1 cup Heavy Cream
* 1tsp Good Vanilla Extract
* 1 1/2 tbsp powdered sugar
* 1 Banana
* Nilla Wafer cookies

*Before you start place a metal bowl and whisk attachment for your mixer in the fridge so its cold when you need it for making the whipped cream*

1. Mix the Vanilla Pudding. Simply follow the directions right on the box. No need to use a mixer just use some muscle! (1 packet of dry mix + 3 cups of COLD milk)
2. You will see the pudding thicken as you mix. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge to set up. When topping with plastic wrap place the wrap on top of the pudding to avoid the pudding from forming a skin.

3. In a chilled small mixing bowl and with chilled beaters, beat cream until it begins to thicken. Add powdered sugar and vanilla; beat until soft peaks form.

Now isnt that better than out of a tub? No oil, or artificial preservatives. YUM!

4. Grab two glasses, I used tall wine glasses. Place a small dollop of whip on the bottom of each glass top with Nilla wafers. I used 4 wafers broken in half in each glass. Top with a layer of pudding, 6 slices of banana, whip, pudding, banana, whip. Garnish the top with crushed wafer a banana slice and a full cookie. 

With the size glasses I used this made about 3 desserts, but could easily be made smaller to feed more if you are entertaining. 

**To make WLS friendly use SF pudding, and use splenda or truvia in the whip instead**

Happy Hump-Day...Enjoy :)

<3 Laura

First Post!

Ok so starting a blog is something I have wanted to do for a long time. I just never thought I had a good reason to, but recently with all cooking and baking I have been doing so many people have been asking me for recipes, pictures, ideas, inspirations. So here I sit, starting a new experience. I turn out some yummy stuff, I won't lie, but it's not always the prettiest, but I'm getting better :)

One of my recent hobbies, ok not so recent about the past year has been surfing online food blogs. I love the recipes, ideas, inspirations. I came across a blog right before Christmas and fell in love with the cupcakes that were featured. Chocolate + Peppermint who can resits that? Glorious Treats is the blog where I found the recipe. Mine didn't turn out to be *as* pretty and I really need to work on my photography but here are some pics and variations I made over the past week

Glorious Treats tells you how to do the red striping when icing the cup cakes. Mine definitely need help lol I topped mine with a Peppermint candy and a cupcake topper on a tooth pick they were cute..

This is the variation I made for my family for Christmas Day. I did the same batter recipe but baked them as two cakes. Colored some of the icing green and layered it between the cakes. The red around the top is just red sugar again I used a few peppermints and cake toppers that were left over from the previous cupcakes. Please excuse the lousy photography this was taken with my cell phone.

From making the cake I had a *TON* of icing left over.

So I bought new icing tips today, as I stated earlier I am pretty much a beginner in the making things look pretty department...these I topped with red and green colored sugars.

when dividing out the batter between each lined cup I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to keep each one the same size. This batter made 27 cupcakes. I know my family won't eat all 27...I'm debating driving down the road and giving them away to random people.

Recipe for Batter and this amazing icing can be found here:
Glorious Treats

<3 Laura ^.^