Easiest Yummy Dessert Yet - Step by Step!

Occasionally, I have posted a recipe on my blog -one that I like a lot and also, that fills my recipe requirements in that it must be relatively EASY to fix.

I decided last night, while getting the ingredients lined up for the dessert I was going to make and which I took to church this morning for the lunch we served the conference held there today that I would take pictures of each step of the process in making this dessert item and then, post it all here on my blog.

This dessert, in my opinion, is super easy to make and as proof, I will tell you I've made many of these over the almost 30 years now since I acquired the recipe and never once has it failed me -or those who ate it either!

This recipe was given to me oh, probably about 1983, I'd say, and it came to me from "Mrs. Boyle" (of Midland, PA), the mother of the guy I was engaged to but then got really cold feet and walked away from the marriage idea then, apparently for good, cause here I am, still single! LOL

And, the name of this masterpiece of easy and deliciousness is "Banana Split Cake!"

Although there is no baking, no cake actually involved in this, it does resemble very much the scrumpdeliciousness of a Dairy Queen-type banana split though.

Anyone can make this delicacy and have a great item to put on your table for your family or something really terrific to take to a pot luck dinner or special meeting sometime, some place, some where. It's super easy to make and a novice cook can make it with extreme ease and for a gourmet-type cook, it's one of those recipes that is really a breeze to fix.

I'm definitely not in the gourmet cooking category as I am too lazy to do all the work involved in that type of cooking plus, a lot of those type of items also call for items that tend to be a lot too pricey for my modest food budget. But this one won't break the bank for you to fix which is another darned good thing about it too!

So, with all that above information in mind, here goes with my very first pictorial, instructional post to my blog!

BANANA SPLIT CAKE!

First off, here's a picture of my recipe for this item. I copied over the recipe to a little notebook cookbook I had put together for myself back in the early 80s and this one has been used so many times -as you can see by the stains from who knows what splattered all over it -that it came loose from my notebook several years ago and is now just this -a loose piece of raggedy paper that holds the means to make a really great delicious dessert! (Good luck trying to read my chicken scratch penmanship on this. "Writing" was one of my absolute worst and most disliked subjects all through elementary school. Can you tell?)

The first thing you need is a 13x9 inch cake pan. Last night, because I was making this to take to church, I used a disposable pan, just for convenience sake.

And you will use that pan to make a graham cracker crust. Here's the ingredients needed for the crust:
Two cups of graham cracker crumbs
3 tablespoons white sugar
1 stick of margarine -melted.

Mix those ingredients together with a fork and then, pat into the pan and stick it in the freezer to firm the crust up a good bit.
Next, set up a small colander atop a plastic bowl that will hold about 2 cups -at least -of liquid and empty into the colander 1 large can (16 ounce, I believe it is) of crushed pineapple and allow that to drain.

While that's draining, you can then mix the filling -which is sort of like a pudding (but isn't quite) and it's not cooked either.

Here's the ingredients and directions for making the filling:

2 cups of powdered (confectioners) sugar
2 eggs
2 sticks (1 cup) of margarine (or butter if you prefer that.) Allow the margarine to soften before beating it all in with the eggs and powdered sugar.

Beat those three items together on a slow speed at first to blend them and then, turn the speed up to a medium-to-high speed and whip this for a minimum of 15 minutes! Yes, you read that right -15 minutes! That's what Mrs. Boyle specified to me although she never gave me a reason for that amount of time though. (I'm thinking perhaps it is because you are using raw eggs and this food is not going to be cooked so perhaps beating it that long eliminates any dangers then from the raw eggs making people ill. I just don't know the answer to that but I am religious about making sure to beat it for at least those 15 minutes anyway!)

This picture below is what your pudding filling will look like.

Pour the filling over the graham cracker crust and spread it evenly across the crust.

Then, you take that pineapple that you've had draining and wring it to remove as much of the juice remaining in the pineapple. Yep! Get a big old handful of that crushed pineapple and squeeze the living daylights -er juice -out of it! Till it gets to be a ball about the size of between a tennis ball and a baseball.

Lightly drop the pineapple in dribs and drabs atop the pudding filling til you have that just about completely covered. Try to separate the pineapple bits as much as possible to make for a more even distribution of that fruit on top of the filling. So it looks sort of like this then:

Now you take three really nice, firm, large bananas and slice them fairly thinly and layer these banana slices neatly across the entire pan of graham cracker crust/pudding/pineapple.
Like this:

We're almost finished with this luscious dessert now. All that remains is to take a large container (16 ounces) of Cool Whip -or any generic type frozen whipped topping -that you have set out to allow it to soften a bit -and spread that over the top of the whole mixture now.

After doing that, you can set some maraschino cherries (drain them, please) on top in a pattern of your choosing or just randomly, depending on how well you like -or don't like -cherries -as these are optional. And take a bottle of chocolate syrup and drizzle some of that around the top of your cake then too and presto magic, you end up then with this:

I usually place this in the freezer then to let it chill to very firm or at least in the refrigerator to keep until I'm ready to serve it.

But how difficult was that now to make? Do you think I lied to you about how it's an easy-peasy dish? Trust me, it's not! And believe me, you will get raves about it from whoever tries it too -unless you happen to have a really picky eater around who either does not like pineapple or bananas or, heaven forbid, chocolate syrup! My grandkids even will eat this and you all know from my telling you, time and time again, how finicky they can be about various foods!

Try it! I'm betting you will love it just as much as I do!

The most difficult thing about making this entire project is beating the pudding for 15 minutes and wringing the juice out of the pineapple. (Save the drained juice into a container and also, don't forget to have that container handy to catch all the extra juice that you'll be wringing out of the pineapple too -which amounts to a total of about 2 full cups of pineapple juice that you'll have leftover to mix with oh, pina coladas if you like or just drink it as a breakfast juice too. Yummy any way you deal with that, ya know!

Enjoy!