Going Octo-Bananas

Who sets an alarm on a Saturday morning to get up and make a trifle? This girl! And yes, as shown by the photo, I've gone bananas!

At the request of my father-in-law, whose 87th birthday we celebrated today, he wanted something like the banana cream pie-type dessert his wife used to make. Thank goodness he was amenable to a dessert in the trifle format so I wouldn't have to compete with that memory. It was tasty. I'll share the recipe in a bit.

We went to lunch at Anchor Bay and he was surprised with a cupcake for dessert. We had a nice group – Baird and Sherry (you can see in the background), plus Colin, Amy and their kids, and Jim and I plus Clay and Becca – and Mr. Carter who arrived late last night!

We all came to our house after lunch to settle our full bellies and the have dessert. Dad looks pretty good for an octogenarian, doesn't he?

Tried to get a picture of the grandkids. You can see Carter and Colin cooperating in the back row but Eli, Dad, and Mya were looking elsewhere. Still, it's sweet. My favorite peoples.

By mid-afternoon the crowd had dispersed and Carter hit the road as well. It was so nice to see him for a short visit but it's also Mamie's birthday weekend so we understand why he wanted to head back.

Since we're laying low with an empty house, I figured I share what I threw together to make my first ever Go Bananas Trifle.

First of all, I could've baked a banana cake from scratch. But when we saw this I figured I can't compete with Dolly Parton on any level. So let's go with that. I baked that yesterday afternoon and today I sliced up cubes to make the bottom layer of the trifle.

Next layer was Banana Cream Pie pudding. I ran across the Snack Pack version before finding the instant version, so that's what I went with. Please know that if you try this at home you'll need to by 3 of these – 6 packs per layer. I sliced up some REAL banana and lay those pieces on top of the pudding layer.

The crunchy layer – as I call it – was Vanilla Wafers x 2. I used a rolling pin to crush up some of vanilla wafers pictured above and used a knife to slice up bits of the wafer cookies with vanilla creme.

That went onto the top of the pudding layer before I started again with banana cake cubes and repeated layers. The tip-top layer was whipped cream and some banana slices.

As a side option, I had both chocolate and strawberry syrup in case anyone wanted more of a "banana split" type taste. Overall, positive reviews. So go bananas! 

P.S. If anyone like banana cake, I've got about half of one left I could gift you with whipped cream or whatever!