Banana Cream Pudding Pie and Fluffer Nutter Ice Cream

Oh, superbowl. If only you were actually a super big bowl of anything except football. My first superbowl party was in Boston in 1997, when my male roommates hosted our friends for the big event. They made tons of food, including jambalaya and gumbo in honor of the New Orleans location of the game. Or maybe New Orleans was in the superbowl. Anyway, my main memory of the day comes from the kitchen, where I was hanging out with the other women at the party (do mostly women hang out in kitchens during big football games?), and one of my roommates shouted "five minutes until kickoff!". To which I responded, "there's a cookoff? Where?"

This should illustrate how little I care about football.

But the food! And the company, and the commercials! These I enjoy. So I have a couple of treats I made for a superbowl party tomorrow.

One is a banana cream pudding pie, because I had soul food the other week and they were out of their fantastic banana pudding. So I went without, plotting my banana cream revenge.

I bought a 9" graham cracker pie crust, 1 4 oz. package vanilla instant pudding mix, milk, 3 bananas, and whipped topping. I prepared the pudding according to the package instructions, sliced half the bananas into the pie shell, poured the prepared pudding over it, sliced the remainder of the bananas on top, chilled the thing in the fridge for a few hours, then spread 3/4 tub of whipped topping over the whole shebang. Looks pretty, and I'm trying to avoid digging into it until tomorrow. By the way, everything was non-fat, so really, it's a health food.

Next, I attempted Fluffer Nutter Ice Cream on the suggestion of Bike Guy, who had never had a fluffer nutter sandwich until I made him one the other day. (If you too have not had a fluffer nutter, I encourage you to go to your nearest supermarket, buy white bread, creamy sugar-filled peanut butter, and marshmallow fluff and do the first thing that comes to mind. You won't regret it.) I made a basic vanilla ice cream recipe (5.5 cups heavy whipping cream, 1 1/4 cups sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla--mix together and chill to 40 degrees, then prepare in ice cream maker). I warmed about 1/2 cup of peanut butter in the microwave for 45 seconds to make it liquefy, but I had trouble with the fluff. It wouldn't get runny, no matter what I did to it. So after the ice cream was ready for the transfer to a freezer container, I added the runny peanut butter and fluff and stirred it a little. Now it's chilling in the freezer. I wanted to get nice ribbons of p'butt and fluff in the ice cream, but I have a feeling it's chunky. And there's nothing to represent the white bread. I'm sure it will taste good, but the presentation is lacking. We shall see if the football-loving hordes like it.

(Note to suedoenymph: I just read your comment about freezing the bowl first--great idea! And I changed my settings so that now I will receive blog comments via email so I get those friendly tips in time!)

I'll post some Feedback on the desserts: Both big hits, just like the sacks on Tom Brady. after the big day.

Also, Rachael Ray had a couple of tasty-sounding dishes (viewed from a treadmill at the gym) that I plan to make one night this week just because they sounded so good. No football necessary.

p.s. Bike Guy is making this dish tonight for dinner, and experimenting with a shrimp, jalapeno, cream cheese, and bacon-wrapped appetizer. Eeee!

p.p.s. if you're a fan of bacon or Jim Gaffigan, you'll love this.