Banana Pudding à la Anouk

Lately, Anouk's most-often uttered phase is, "I do it myself!" She says it during bath time, when she gets dressed, when we return books to the library, and most of all, when I ask her if she wants to help me cook. Because I have an inquiring mind, I started to wonder, what WOULD happen if I let a not-quite-two-and-a-half-year-old cook something -- all by herself? Then I pulled out all of the ingredients for banana pudding and decided to find out. Because of A's milk allergy, our version of this pudding is dairy free (hooray!).

Ingredients:

1 package instant vanilla pudding
1.5 cups coconut milk
1 box vanilla wafer cookies
3-4 sliced bananas
Coconut whipped cream

Directions:

Follow the directions on the back of the instant pudding box to prepare the pudding. The trick of using coconut milk for this is to 1) use full fat coconut milk, the stuff in cans as opposed to the cartons, and 2) to use a half a cup less than the package calls for. It should set up nicely, but if it's too thick, you can add more milk, a little at a time, to think it out. Put a layer of cookies in the bottom of the bowl, follow with a layer of pudding and a layer of sliced bananas. Repeat. Serve with whipped cream on top.

I measured out the milk for the pudding and helped A. stir the lumps out. I also sliced some of the bananas and gave her a general overview of the project. But other than that, Anouk assembled this recipe on her own, all by herself.

The end result is a little pudding-heavy, and several of the banana slices and a bit more of the cookies went into her mouth instead of the bowl. Oh, and our carefully mixed up coconut cream had a tragic accident with the floor, so we were sadly without delicious (non)dairy topping this go-round. But she was so happy with her creation that I'm deeming the project a full-blown success.

Tastes like victory!