Quick banana custard
I had two sad little bananas in the fruit bowl this evening and fancied a quick comforting dessert – so here we have it, banana custard!
Makes around 3/4s of a pint (served three):
Ingredients:
2 bananas
300ml cold water
6 tsp dried skimmed milk
2 tbsp flour
2 egg yolks (the whites can be frozen until needed – don’t throw them away!)
Optional: 1 tbsp sugar (I didn’t use it and didn’t think it needed it, but I don’t have much of a sweet tooth)
Break the banana into chunks and combine it with the water and dried skimmed milk in a blender (if you want to use liquid milk, just use 300ml in place of the powdered milk and water). Blend for 30 seconds until smooth.
Pour the ‘banana milk’ into a saucepan on a medium heat for a few minutes, reducing to a low heat when it starts to simmer. Milk can boil very quickly – even milk with bananas in – so keep an eye on it!
Separate the egg yolk and white and add the yolk to a small bowl. Spoon the flour in (and sugar if using) and mix well with a fork to form a paste. Spoon a little of the warm banana milk into the egg and flour, mixing in well with a fork to stop the egg from cooking! Add a little more banana milk, and repeat until the bowl is almost full.
Pour the bowl into the saucepan of remaining banana milk, and stir well to combine. Simmer on a low heat for 10 minutes or until it has reached its desired consistency – I like mine really thick and comforting.
Eat from a bowl with a spoon, or pour over a favourite cake, or into tarts to chill… 🙂
Jack Monroe. Twitter: @msjackmonroe
Categories: Recipes & Food, SNACKS & TREATS
Sounds yummy, and I would eat cold when it had set solid.
Just one question and it sounds silly but you would use plain flour yes not SF
Whatever you’ve got, I don’t imagine SRF would make much of a difference 🙂
You can make meringue cookies to go with the custard using the egg whites.
Oh YES! 🙂 I did think some sort of meringue as I froze the egg whites but there’s always next time 😉
Oo! How do you make meringue cookies, please? 😀
Is this banana custard recipe firm enough to use as a pie filling??
Sounds good. Did you use plain flour or cornflour [which is usually used] to make the custard? I sometimes include some coco powder to make a chocolate custard which usually turns out well.
Just plain flour 🙂 worked a treat!
cocoa powder for chocolate custard – what a great idea. I will have to try that
How about French floating islands with the egg whites? I think they are a form of cooked meringue
do the egg whites have to be whisked before they can be frozen?
Nope, just freeze them. Defrost in the fridge overnight to loosen them up again.
Thanks for this – it’s great to see another use for skimmed milk powder. It will make a nice change from rice pudding!
I used it in my macaroni cheese too! 🙂
I am finding your recipes so useful and delicious. They are not only great for my small budget, but brilliant if you a) are attempting to prepare a healthy meal while entertaining a toddler and baby and b) a bit rubbish at cooking. My kids were getting so bored of fishfingers so thanks! And your story- so inspiring!
Adding some vanilla essence if u have any makes it yummier 🙂
Reblogged this on A Lusitanian Worker and commented:
And wonderful recipe from Miss Monroe
Banana pudding (you call it custard, but it’s the same difference to me) is one of my all time favorite store-bought “American” foods, which I had,no idea to make by scratch until now. I used to buy the little Jello instant pudding mixes. God bless ypu for providing a homemade alternative that really is not that much more labor intensive than the boxed version. I suppose I could have scoured teh Internez earlier, but I have more or less ditched the other food blogs I used to read, as most of the recipes came off as too bourgie, too expensive, or too much of a pain for a working person to make.
I wish there were more like you, but since there aren’t any, you’re all we got! This and the mac-n-cheese and any other quick homemade versions of guilty pleasure store bought food PLEAZE!
That’s one for our Small Boy to have a go at… betcha he eats it faster than he can cook it!
For a fluffy end product try beating the whites with a teaspoon of sugar until they hold soft peaks and then when the custard base is made and is pipeing hot gently fold the two together. The heat from the base will set and cook the whites.
This can also extend the recipe to serve four especially
If you have any sweet biscuits one or two crushed and sprinkled on top before serving.
The egg whites would make an excellent mousse with dark chocolate. About 30g – 50g melted dark chocolate per egg white depending on how thick and rich you want it. Beat the whites to stiff peaks, beat a spoonful of the egg whites into the melted chocolate, fold the rest in, then fridge. The Sainsburys Basics dark chocolate works really well for this as its sweet, with a litte bitterness.
Argh – typo. I meant that amount of chocolate per two egg whites. I usually use a 100g bar per 4 medium egg whites.
sounds yummy, DP loves banana custard made with the instant type custard and poured over sliced bananas while the custard is warm, not hot – he can be very precise about what he likes!
That is what I thought you meant when you said ‘banana custard’, he would probably love this as well, so I’ll try it and see
I’m definitely going to try this during the half term. Think I’ll use the egg whites to make some macaroons as I have all the other ingredients in including some plain chocolate for the filling which I bought when I made your chilli the other day.
It sounds like a pudding we used to have when we were kids and it had biscuit crumbs on top. Really comforting and delicious. I have tried it camping with some instant custard and crushed digestives, but the home made banana variety sounds much nicer so I will have to try it. Thanks Jack 🙂
This sounds lovely, I think I would pour it into a pastry case to make it go even further, with a squirt of squirty cream as an added extra 🙂
Jack, this is brilliant! I made it at home day before yesterday with my two sad-looking bananas and it was yummy (mine had sugar in it). I sprinkled a little cinnamon on top for the kids, and the grown-ups’ had some rum and cinnamon: voilà! Bananas Foster pudding! I didn’t light it on fire, though. Oh well, I can always flambé it next time. 😉
Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & THE SIEGE OF BRITAIN POLITICAL JOURNAL.
Got the bananas, got the flour, even the eggs. Maybe an all thumbs guy can make this!
Today I made some (budget) chocolate and sultana brownies using egg whites so I used the yolks for this recipe and we had it with the hot brownies. Because of the flavour in the brownies, I omitted the bananas and used 1/2 tsp vanilla instead but it definitely needed the tbsp of sugar.
Could you do this with fresh milk?
Oops. Read it again properly and made it this evening with some apples baked with cinnamon. Was lovely!
Mine ended up more like a pudding than a custard and it was a grey colour not a yellow colour like the picture. Perhaps too much banana one was big the other was medium or not enough yolk hmm still tasted good.
Either my idea of custard is different to yours or I made a mistake somewhere along the line because I ended up with a stodgy grey banana Ready Brek and not a yellowy liquid! I made it to go with the jammy sponges elsewhere in the blog which were perfect and I made your salmon paste pasta for our dinner which was amazing so two out of three ain’t bad!
Just made this and it tasted very floury. Added some vanilla and sugar to make it palatable. Next time I would use cornflour and reduce the amount of flour.
I attempted this expecting to fail epically, thinking custard was tricky to make. I made this with ease and it was lovely.
Very shorty after he was born my little boy became covered head to foot in a rash. To me he was beautiful but I can acknowledge that to everyone else he was blotchy, red and a little bit crusty. It was baby eczema and though he was being breast food the dairy in my diet was causing it to flair so I gave it all up. He was a small but hungry little boy and at 4 months I started him on solids. At 6 months he had his check up and I was told that he was undersized. I should be giving him yogurt and cheese and bread slathered with butter (I also eat gluten free as their is a high incidence of wheat and gluten intolerance in my family) It was very upsetting to be told that I was doing it all wrong no matter how I tried to explain. And if he got sick which all babies do it was so difficult to get the weight back again. So it was homemade banana custard to the rescue. We substituted in almond milk and GF flour with 2 extra yolks and a splash of vanilla to help with the eggy flavour. It fed him up – got my baby healthy. 8 months later, even if is a little small he is very happy. He is teething at the moment so there will a pot it made fresh tonight. “Yoam!” As he says.
I was absolutely famished for custard so when I saw your recipe for banana custard I had it made in minutes (I used corn flour). Perfection!