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Walking Banana Pudding is a fun, no-bake dessert served right in little vanilla wafer bags. You cut the top off the bag, spoon in cold banana pudding, add banana slices, and finish with whipped topping. You’re going to love how easy, portable, and cheerful it is.
Why You’ll Love It
- Ready in about 10 minutes — instant pudding sets in just 5 minutes.
- Individual portions — every bag is its own snack-sized serving.
- Crunchy or soft — serve right away for crisp wafers or chill for a classic soft pudding texture.
- No Oven needed — perfect when the kitchen is already too hot for baking.
Ingredient Notes
The recipe uses instant banana pudding, and I do mean instant. Not cook-and-serve. The instant kind is what gives you that quick five-minute set-up. I usually grab the regular grocery-store box—nothing fancy. Banana pudding mix has that very specific, unmistakably artificial banana smell, and I say that with affection. It smells like childhood and fluorescent grocery-store lighting.
For the milk, use the 2 cups called for on the pudding box recipe here. I tend to use whole milk because that’s what I keep around for coffee and because it makes the pudding feel a little richer, but whatever milk you normally use should be fine as long as it sets the pudding properly.
You’ll need eight single-serving packages of mini vanilla wafers. The little snack bags are the whole point. Don’t open them and dump them into bowls—well, you can, obviously, I’m not the banana pudding police—but the bag is what makes it “walking.” Fold the cut edges down so nobody has to wear pudding on their knuckles.
One banana is enough here, sliced thinly and divided among eight bags. That sounds skimpy, but each serving is snack-sized. If your banana is particularly tiny, I might quietly buy a second one just for insurance. Bananas are unpredictable creatures. One minute they’re green as a lawn chair, and the next minute they’ve turned themselves into bread ingredients.
And then an 8-ounce tub of Cool Whip, or whipped topping of your choice. I’m not above Cool Whip, not even a little. Homemade whipped cream is lovely, yes, but this is a 10-minute dessert in a cookie bag. Let’s not turn it into a project.
Ingredients
- 1 box (5.1 ounces) instant banana pudding
- 2 cups milk
- 8 single-serving packages mini vanilla wafers
- 1 banana, sliced thinly
- 1 tub (8 ounces) Cool Whip, thawed
Instructions
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the instant banana pudding mix and the 2 cups of milk. Whisk it until it’s smooth-ish—don’t stand there chasing one microscopic lump for ten minutes, for heaven’s sake. Let the pudding sit for 5 minutes to set. This is a fine time to slice the banana, locate your serving spoons, or wipe the counter where you somehow spilled pudding powder even though you were being careful. I always am careful. Except when I’m not.
While the pudding sets, use scissors to cut open the tops of the eight mini vanilla wafer bags. Don’t cut too far down; you want enough bag left to hold your pudding. Fold the cut edges outward and down, making a little cuff around each bag. It makes them easier to eat and keeps the bag from flopping into the topping, which is a small thing but it will annoy you more than it should.
Spoon the prepared banana pudding into each cookie bag. Divide it as evenly as you can, but I wouldn’t get out a measuring cup unless that sort of thing brings you peace. It does not bring me peace. I eyeball it, then give any bag that looks neglected an extra spoonful.
Add a few slices of banana to each bag. If you are making these ahead by even a little while, you can toss or brush the banana slices with a bit of lemon juice to slow down browning. Just a little—nobody wants lemony banana pudding. That would be a bridge too far.
Top each bag with a dollop of Cool Whip. A dollop is a flexible term. Mine tend to become generous clouds.
Serve right away with spoons if you want the vanilla wafers crisp and crunchy. If you prefer the softer, more old-fashioned banana pudding situation, tuck the finished bags into the refrigerator for a few hours. Just know the cookies will continue to soften the longer they sit. There is no bad version here—only preferences and possibly a little pudding on your shirt.
Variations
You can absolutely switch up the pudding flavor. Vanilla pudding makes this taste closer to a traditional banana pudding, and banana cream pudding works nicely too. Chocolate pudding gives you a chocolate-covered-banana sort of thing, and chocolate does improve everything.
If you’re trying to make this even easier for camping or a no-kitchen Kind Of afternoon, use store-bought pudding cups instead of mixing the instant pudding. It’s not exactly the same amount of pudding in every bag unless you portion it carefully, but it works, and sometimes “works” is the gold standard.
Mini Teddy Grahams work when the store is out of the vanilla wafer bags. They’re good, though different—more honey-cookie flavor, less classic banana pudding. Crushed shortbread cookies in plain snack bags are fine, but not better. The original little wafer bags are what make this charming, and I have learned, slowly and against my nature, not to improve every single thing.
If you want to dress them up, add a maraschino cherry on top, mini chocolate chips, chopped nuts, or a few sprinkles. The cherries look awfully cute against the white topping. I don’t usually bother unless it’s a birthday because I’m not opening a jar of cherries just to use eight and then find the rest shoved behind the pickle relish.
Storage & Reheating
There is no reheating involved here, thank goodness. Cold pudding should remain cold pudding. We are not monsters.
I don’t recommend storing the assembled bags for long, especially if you want that crisp wafer crunch. The cookies get softer and softer as they sit, which isn’t a problem exactly—it becomes more like regular banana pudding—but the bags are not their best after a long stretch in the refrigerator.
For the easiest make-ahead plan, prepare the pudding and keep it covered in the refrigerator, keep the Cool Whip chilled, and wait to slice the banana and assemble the bags until close to serving. You can open and fold the cookie bags ahead of time if you like, though I usually forget that step until the bags need snipping.
If you do have leftovers, refrigerate them and eat them within a day. The bananas will brown eventually, the wafers will soften, and the whipped topping may look a little tired. Still edible, yes. Just not company-pretty.
Final Notes
I keep coming back to recipes like this when life feels crowded. Not dramatic-crowded, necessarily—just the regular kind. The kind where a ride is needed, the dog has tracked in something damp, there are tomatoes on the counter that need using, and the news is doing what the news does. A little bag of cold pudding and cookies is not going to solve any of that.
But it can make a Tuesday feel less like a Tuesday.
These banana pudding bags are an easy way to make a simple evening feel a little more relaxed.
Serve them crunchy. Serve them soft. Put cherries on top or don’t. Just keep a few extra spoons around, because one may end up in the grass, and extra whipped topping is never a bad idea.
Walking Banana Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 box instant banana pudding 5.1 ounces; instant, not cook-and-serve
- 2 cups milk whole milk or your preferred milk that will set the pudding properly
- 8 single-serving packages mini vanilla wafers
- 1 banana sliced thinly
- 1 tub Cool Whip 8 ounces, thawed, or whipped topping of your choice
Instructions
- In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the instant banana pudding mix and the milk, then whisk until mostly smooth.
- Let the pudding sit for 5 minutes to set while you slice the banana and gather serving spoons.
- Use scissors to cut open the tops of the eight mini vanilla wafer bags, being careful not to cut too far down so the bags can still hold the pudding.
- Fold the cut edges outward and down to make a small cuff around each bag so they are easier to eat from.
- Spoon the prepared banana pudding into each cookie bag, dividing it as evenly as you can.
- Add a few thin banana slices to each bag.
- Top each bag with a dollop of Cool Whip.
- Serve right away with spoons for crisp vanilla wafers, or refrigerate the finished bags for a few hours if you prefer a softer, classic banana pudding texture.