Years ago, shortly after Gene’s debuted as a pop-up, founder Avery Cottrell and his team knew their Biscoff Banana Pud-Pud was a hit. It was the first menu item to consistently sell out and cause a reaction among customers. Things have changed for Gene’s — now a brick-and-mortar restaurant in Atlanta’s East Lake neighborhood — but aside from fine-tuning, their banana pudding recipe remains the same.
“We’ve been doing this banana pudding or something very close to it for almost five, six years now,” said Gene’s founder Avery Cottrell. “Once we figured out how to get it that thick, we were like, all right, we’ve got something.”
Credit: Aaliyah Man
Credit: Aaliyah Man
The Gene’s recipe is a derivation of co-owner Matt Christensen’s grandmother’s recipe. “Matt would come home and his dad would be making pudding for him all the time,” Cottrell said. The goal was to emulate what the Gene’s team considers perfect banana pudding, citing meat-and-threes in metro Atlanta like Matthews Cafeteria and Magnolia Room Cafeteria. They leaned in, drenching vanilla wafers and Lotus Biscoff cookies with a thick mixture of cream and pudding.
The thickness of Biscoff Banana Pud-Pud grants an experience akin to eating lasagna. Using a 1-to-1 ratio of instant pudding mix and sweetened condensed milk, giving the ingredients ample time to settle, and folding the whipped cream into the pudding are the secrets to attaining that unfathomable density. Meanwhile, the pudding’s flavor isn’t overly artificial.
There’s a trick that sets this pudding’s flavor apart: the inclusion of Lotus Biscoff cookies in addition to vanilla wafer cookies. “We love that they aren’t too sweet while bringing a warm molasses flavor,” Christensen said.
Credit: Aaliyah Man
Credit: Aaliyah Man
Banana pudding as we know it is a descendant of British-style trifle, explained Southern food historian Adrian Miller during our telephone interview.
“It’s that same formula of bread, custard and meringue,” Miller said. “You see a lot of trifle recipes in early Southern cookbooks and American cookbooks because what American colonists often did is adapt European recipes for the American context.”
During the 18th and 19th centuries, interest in Caribbean fruits skyrocketed and tropical ingredients, such as bananas and coconuts, started appearing in American, especially Southern, food. The cost and time required to make traditional banana pudding, Miller said, gave the dessert a special aura.
The modern recipe yields a banana pudding far more accessible than the formula of yore. The majority of ingredients are shelf-stable and relatively inexpensive. Instant pudding mix, a culinary development of the last century, simplifies the work and time needed to make the meringue and bake the pudding. Easy-to-prepare whipped cream replaces more challenging meringue. Bananas, the namesake ingredient, are no longer a luxury good.
“When bananas were first imported, they were very expensive,” Miller said. “You can see why, when bananas became more common, people started adding bananas to (trifle) and then boom, you get banana pudding.”
Once relegated to the elites, the centuries-old dessert now truly belongs to the masses.
“It’s an unpretentious dessert, very just classically Southern,” Cottrell said. “And the less you kind of try to zhuzh it up, I think the better, too.”
Gene’s. 2371 Hosea Williams Drive SE, Atlanta; genesgenesgenes.com
Read about other Southern classic dishes and the chefs who are reimagining them at ajc.com/food-and-recipes/southern-classics-reimagined.
Credit: Aaliyah Man
Credit: Aaliyah Man
Gene’s Biscoff Banana Pud-Pud
The distinctive caramelized flavor of Gene’s banana pudding comes from Biscoff cookies, in addition to traditional vanilla wafers. Cottrell recommends using French vanilla-flavored Jell-O pudding mix, rather than banana-flavored, for better flavor.
The recipe also utilizes green bananas. “You want to let it (the pudding) set overnight to make it really nice,” Cottrell said. “So we cut ‘em (the green bananas) and they’re still a little crunchy, and then by the time we serve it, they’re perfect and they’re not mushed out.”
1 (3.4 ounce) box French vanilla Jell-O instant pudding
1 (14-ounce) can Nestle La Lechera sweetened condensed milk
5-6 underripe (green) bananas, peeled
1 quart heavy whipping cream
1 (11-ounce) box vanilla wafer cookies
1 (8.8-ounce) package Lotus Biscoff cookies
In a large mixing bowl, combine instant pudding mix and sweetened condensed milk. Whisk until thick. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
Add heavy whipping cream to a second large bowl. Stir with a whisk or electric mixer on the lowest speed until very stiff peaks form, about 5 minutes. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
To assemble the pudding: Slice the bananas crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick circles. Remove both bowls from the refrigerator. Using a rubber scraper, fold the whipped cream into the pudding until just mixed. In a hotel pan or 9-by-13 baking dish, layer one sleeve of Biscoff cookies and half of the vanilla wafers in a checkerboard pattern. Top the cookies with a single layer of sliced bananas, then about half of the pudding-cream mixture. Repeat the pattern, ending with the pudding-cream mixture.
Cover dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight. Serve cold, straight from the refrigerator, using a spoon or flat-topped utensil, such as a fish spatula or grill turner to make square-shaped portions. Will keep for up to 1 week in a refrigerated, airtight container.
Serves 9.
Per serving: 845 calories (percent of calories from fat, 53), 10 grams protein, 91 grams carbohydrates, 64 grams total sugars, 2 grams fiber, 51 grams total fat (30 grams saturated), 138 milligrams cholesterol, 412 milligrams sodium.
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