Sweetened Condensed Milk Is The Ingredient Your Banana Pudding Is Missing

The slightly caramelized sweetness of ripe bananas makes for delectable desserts, whether you're mashing them into a delectable banana bread or flambéing them into a rich Bananas Foster. But there is perhaps no better banana dessert than the decadently layered banana pudding: a trifle-like concoction made with sliced bananas, vanilla wafer cookies, whipped topping, and plenty of dairy and pudding mix.

While banana pudding may feature fruit, this dessert is far from light; the more decadent the layers of luscious pudding, the better, and there's a trick to ensuring that even boxed pudding mix comes out thick and delicious. A can of sweetened condensed milk is the key: this sugary, syrupy ingredient gets mixed into the pudding, either by itself or alongside milk, as well as with whipped topping to create a rich yet fluffy base for building this classic dessert. In fact, the famous Magnolia Bakery in New York City, known for its popular take on the classic banana pudding, uses sweetened condensed milk in its recipe — so you know this creamy combination must be good.

What makes sweetened condensed milk so deliciously rich? The trick is in the way it's processed. Condensed milk transitions from regular milk to its thick and viscous counterpart through evaporation, which occurs by heating it up and letting it cook down into a syrup. When the water content of the milk is reduced, the result is full of dense, concentrated milk flavor. Add some sugar to that afterward to make it sweet, and you have the perfect dessert ingredient: creamy, milky, and sweet.

Add that to your instant pudding and you'll enhance everything: from the texture (due to the smooth thickness of the condensed milk), to the dairy flavor (from all that concentration), to the sweetness of everything given the added sugar. Just a single can of sweetened condensed milk is an easy way to take your banana pudding from good to great, and with very little additional cost and effort. It's an enhancement that makes all the difference.

Beyond sweetened condensed milk, there are other ways to ensure that your banana pudding is as thick and delicious as it can possibly be. If sweetened condensed milk isn't on hand, a perfectly acceptable substitute is evaporated milk. Evaporated milk is simply condensed milk without the sweetener, so adjust to taste by adding some extra sugar to the mix.

Another small adjustment you can make for a more decadent banana pudding is to use homemade whipped cream, rather than store-bought whipped topping. Though it takes a little more effort to whip up heavy whipping cream at home, the flavor and silky texture are worth it; if you have a stand mixer or hand mixer, the process is made even simpler. These little changes might not seem like much, but they make huge differences in the results, and will leave you with an irresistible banana pudding that everyone will want the recipe for.