When You Require Chocolate Pudding

Posted on by pioneerintrees

I decided that tonight I required my favourite chocolate pudding – for both sustenance and solace. Why? I had a molar pulled today. It was so much fun to have a dude gripping my jaw and trying his damnedest to wrench a massive tooth out of my face. It said on the invoice “complicated removals”. No kidding.

The recipe is dubbed “Any Day Chocolate Pudding”. It’s from a fav cookbook of mine, Pantry Raid. The premise of the cookbook is that if you have a decent pantry, every recipe in the book can be made without a special trip to the store. Great book. And pretty much essential when you have small kids. Who wants to tote kids to the grocery store for one or two special ingredients? Nobody.

I’ve had the book for a long time – since the kids will very little. In those days the pudding was too dark and chocolatey for Annie. Notes in the margin indicate that at some point she started liking it, but a wayward drop or two of water destroyed that archived detail. Sad, that.

I write on all recipe books – changes to make and / or an assessment of the results.

As I said, you likely have all of the ingredients in your pantry and fridge to make this pudding (as long as you have a big-ass container of half & half cream like I always do…). It only takes about 15 minutes to make, from start to finish, but unless you like your pudding hot, you need to consider how long it will take to cool. Especially if you want to make a parfait or something fancy.

Here’s a handy picture sequence to convince you of how easy it is. [This reminds me of those language activities where you had to put the story pictures in an order that made sense. I would have done better if they were about making chocolate pudding. Just sayin’.]

whisk small amount of cream into cornstarch
whisk together 3 T cornstarch and 1/4 c Half and Half cream and set aside
in pot whisk together sugar, cocoa & salt, add hot water
put 2/3 c sugar, 1/2 c cocoa, pinch of salt in a saucepan, stir in 1/3 c hot water
whisk together till smooth
whisk until smooth
add rest of cream to chocolate mixture
once mixture comes to a boil, add 1 3/4 c Half and Half cream
whisk in cornstarch mixture
stir in the cornstarch mixture, whisking steadily as you pour, cook approx 5 min or until thick
add vanilla
add 1 t vanilla, stir in and take off of heat (Note that it is impossible to pour, whisk and take a photo at the same time.)

Of course, it wouldn’t be pudding if you didn’t have to try to prevent a big fat skin forming on the surface. This is the one reason that I feel I need to keep the environmentally unfriendly “plastic wrap” in my kitchen … it’s so damned handy for this purpose.

pour into a bowl, press plastic wrap on the surface of the pudding and let cool

Dollop in a bowl and enjoy.

I dare you to eat just one bowl!

I would have gone the extra mile for  a dollop of whipped cream on top, but then I’d have to eat whatever I whipped up, and I’m just not feeling it at 9pm. Maybe tomorrow night for dessert… and maybe a parfait!! oh ya

“You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, “Let’s get some parfait,” they say, “Hell no, I don’t like no parfait.”? Parfaits are delicious!”