When Jeanna Barnes and her son, Ethan, were experimenting on a way to preserve their banana pudding, they accidentally discovered a way to make a tasty frozen treat that didn’t melt into a sticky mess in the hot summer sun. 

Barnes owns bSweet Dessert Boutique in downtown Troy and serves a wide range of sweet confections and baked goods to patrons. One of BSweet’s specialties is banana pudding. But, Barnes said a drawback with banana pudding is that it loses its color pretty quickly. She said she tried freezing the pudding to extend the shelf life, but that didn’t work out well. So, she and Ethan started experimenting with a custard base for their frozen pudding and eventually hit upon a mixture that was soft enough to dip with a spoon but firm enough not to melt into a puddle in the hot summer sun. 

“People came in and really liked the frozen banana pudding,” Ethan Barnes said. “So we decided to bring back some classic Southern desserts as frozen puddings. All of our frozen puddings are 100 percent made from scratch.” 

The dessert boutique offers nine flavors of pudding – banana, of course, and blackberry honey lime, strawberry cheesecake, lemon icebox cookie, pina colada, summer smores, king turtle, pound cake and peanut butter pie. 

The frozen puddings can be purchased in scoops or by the pint, or even larger sizes with a special order. No matter the size, the frozen puddings are starting to catch on. However, Jeanna Barnes said “frozen pudding” isn’t that catchy, so they’re trying to come up with a name as catchy as their puddings are tasty. 

But, she and Eathan are still scratching their heads on that. So, to speed up the process, they decided to invite their customers to help come up with a name for their frozen puddings. 

Through the end of July, they’re asking customers to drop by bSweet, try one of the nine flavors of  frozen pudding and suggest a name other than “frozen pudding.” 

They’ll pick their three favorite suggestions at the end of July and then let customers vote in a poll to decide the winner. Whoever comes up with the winning suggestion will not only get to name the frozen pudding brand, they’ll also get a gift certificate to bSweet Dessert Bakery. 

Barnes said bSweet will be offering two baking classes for children this summer – cookies for kids and cupcakes for kids – as well as adult classes for baking macaroons, bread and decorating cakes. 

Visit bsweetdessert.net for more information or to sign up for classes.