Here’s an easy recipe for the best banana pudding ever!

Extreme Banana Pudding

Vanilla wafers
6 to 8 bananas, sliced
2 cups milk
1 large box (5 oz.) instant French vanilla pudding
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (12 oz.) container whipped topping, thawed or an equal amount of sweetened whipped cream

Layer vanilla wafers on the bottom of a 9×13 pan or dish. Top with bananas. Beat milk and pudding mix using a mixer. In another bowl, combine the cream cheese and condensed milk. Beat until smooth. Fold the whipped topping into the cream cheese mixture. Add the cream cheese mixture to the pudding mixture and stir until well blended. Pour the mixture over the cookies and bananas and cover with the remaining cookies. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Easy Recipe Variations:

Leave out the bananas and replace the vanilla wafers with chocolate cookies and vanilla pudding with chocolate pudding. If you like chocolate and bananas, then leave the bananas in.

Leave out bananas and cookies and use lemon, butterscotch, or coconut pudding in place of the vanilla. You could garnish butterscotch with butterscotch chips or coconut with toasted coconut and/or pineapple.

You can put any of these in a regular baked pie crust or a graham cracker or cookies crust.

Use the vanilla pudding but try other types of fruit with or in place of the bananas.

You could also add in things like nuts, marshmallows or chocolate shavings depending on the flavor of pudding you are using.

photo by: jasonlam