This banana cream pudding and pie filling is low sugar and delicious. The recipe calls for dried pineapple as part of the pudding mixture, a flavor which blends beautifully with the rest of the pudding and does not stand out at all.
Do not proceed with the recipe until you have read the Note at the bottom which explains an important detail about the pineapple.
When serving this pudding as a pie filling, it is very easy to make the crust ahead which keeps nicely if tightly covered with saran; make the coconut whipped cream a couple days ahead and refrigerate; leaving just the actual pudding to blend and cook up on your serving day or the day before. Thinking ahead saves a lot of last-minute stress.
Prepare a 9″ graham or graham-type pie crust, see Graham-Type Crust
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup softened dried pineapple, cut rings into small pieces and pressed to measure* — be sure and read Note below.
1/4 cup organic cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp agar powder added for pie filling only
2 tbsp unprocessed cane sugar or sweetener of your choice
1/4 tsp butter flavoring, opt. but adds a nice flavor
2-3 drops yellow food coloring, opt. — this makes a very authentic-looking vanilla pudding, but the pudding is a nice light color without it.
1 cup almond milk
1/2 cup coconut milk **
1 1/2 tsp vanilla — I like to use Cook’s powdered vanilla
nicely ripened bananas
*The broom-style dried pineapple does not work here at all, and fresh or canned will taste like a pineapple pie. We use the unsulfured dried pineapple that has a small amount of sugar. I put the pineapple briefly (5-10 seconds) into VERY hot water to soften, rinse it well to remove as much sugar as possible.
**If you prefer, this can be replaced with almond milk. It will be slightly less rich, but still delicious.