You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘pudding’ tag.
When I miss my mom, sometimes I crave brownie batter.
When I was little, my mom used to make brownies from the box and let my sister and I lick the bowl or the spoon. As we got older, we would make the brownies ourselves, and the whole house smelled like warm, buttery chocolate while they baked in the oven. We would turn on the oven light and stare at them as the batter turned shiny, then crisped on top. The moment we tested them with a toothpick was always agony. Invariably, I got ahead of myself and the toothpick would come out not at all clean, and back in the oven the brownies would go. When they were finally done, we would cut them into small pieces and eat them warm out of the glass pan, usually watching a movie. The whole pan would be gone in less than a day, usually. We would spend the day running to the kitchen to cut off a square, eating it on the way out the door or back to the sofa. The next morning, the brownies would be divvied up for breakfast, because why not?
Not infrequently, brownies were part of our Friday night, pizza and a movie routine (sometimes replaced by cookie dough). The three of us would rent a movie, order or make a pizza, and gorge on cheese and chocolate while we watched the funny, predictable mating dance of girl-meets-boy.
The batter of any baking venture is usually the best part. As opposed to giving one child the bowl and the other the spoon, my mom would hand spoons to everyone and we would clean the bowl together. There’s no point in tossing perfectly good batter down the drain, after all, and no one was concerned about the horrifying effects of raw eggs. I’m still here, after all.
When I saw this recipe for chocolate pudding on The Kitchn, I immediately thought of boxed brownie batter. This recipe tastes remarkably like brownie batter once it’s done, and is a cinch to make. For those with concerns, no raw eggs need cross your lips for you to enjoy the sweet chocolate simplicity. I won’t be able to be with my mom on Mother’s Day this year, but I made chocolate pudding in her honor.
Chocolate Pudding
Serves 8, or serves 2 multiple times
Adapted from The Kitchn, who were inspired by The Minimalist
You will need:
½ c. granulated sugar
½ c. unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ tsp. salt
3 tbsp. cornstarch
1 c. milk
1 c. heavy cream
1 tsp. vanilla
Whisk dry ingredients in a small bowl and set aside.
Heat milk and cream in a saucepan over medium heat until it just begins to bubble.
Remove half the cream to the bowl with the dry ingredients and whisk quickly, until the cream and dry mixture are fully incorporated. Add the chocolate mix to the pan with the rest of the cream, lower heat to medium-low, and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens. (This only take a couple of minutes).
Pour into a container, cover with plastic wrap touching the surface of the pudding, and chill in the fridge until you’re ready to serve. And wish your mothers a Happy Mother’s Day.
Photo by Mevrouw Cupcake, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License.
I haven’t had the baking bug in quite awhile. I could bore you with all of my reasons and excuses, but instead, I’ll bribe you with chocolate!
The making of these tiny pots of chocolate cream was precipitated by my waking up with a sudden determination to bake something, but this elusive “something” needed to meet several criteria.
The baked good needed to be something that Handsome and I could consume in a short amount of time, with a relatively low level of calorie-guilt. It needed to be something simple– no recipes calling for chilling overnight, or blanching the almonds before toasting, peeling, and re-toasting them, all in the service of eventually candying them as a garnish. I needed something simple, straightforward, and with a tad of elegance.
Enter my mother’s Betty Crocker Cookbook. Amid the recipes for Cherries Jubilee and Grasshopper Brownies was sandwiched a recipe for pot de crème. (Spoiler alert: this is not that recipe.) Flipping through this cookbook was enlightening; Betty takes a lot of shortcuts compared with the all-organic, gluten-free, free-range, Atkins-friendly bloggers of today (all of whom I love dearly and worship faithfully, btw). Betty is all about the pudding packet and the canned pie filling. As I giggled at the subversiveness of using shortening in a pie crust and canned pears for a special company-quality dessert, I remembered a recent post from The Kitchn about using a packet of Jell-O to flavor frosting. The cake they use to demonstrate this technique is every eight-year-old girl’s fantasy. The final product is covered in sprinkles, candles, candies, and glitter.
My pot de crème is not that. But the recipe comes from the fine bloggers at The Kitchn, who lately have won my heart and are my new favorites. Their recipe is simple, easy to follow, and has five ingredients. A quick Google search also informed me that I didn’t need fancy ramekins to make pot de crème; I wound up using four white ramekins and two small IKEA juice glasses. My eggs are free range, but my chocolate sure ain’t Scharffen Berger. And my heavy cream is definitely the store brand. This fancy, intimidating, French-so-it-must-be-impossible recipe came together in about ten minutes with so little effort, it may as well have been the pudding packet.
*Note: I have no photos for this post, because I ate all six little pots of goodness before I could photograph them in daylight. You’ll just have to imagine how beautiful they were.
Chocolate Whiskey Pots de Crème
Adapted from The Kitchn
Makes 6 servings
You will need:
2 c. heavy cream
5 oz. dark or bittersweet chocolate
1/4 c. honey
4 egg yolks
3 tbsp. whiskey (don’t use a smoky variety)
Preheat the oven to 300, and bring 4 cups of water to a simmer in a small pot. Set out six ramekins in a 13×9 cake pan.
Bring the heavy cream to a simmer over medium heat.
Meanwhile, chop the chocolate into tiny pieces. (Note: 5 ounces of chocolate is a weird amount, as bars are 4 ounces. I used one bar and added about a tablespoon of chocolate chips I had on hand. It was fine.)
Combine the eggs, honey, and whiskey in another bowl and whisk about two minutes, or until it starts to thicken.
When the cream starts to simmer, remove it from the heat and stir in the chocolate. Whisk until chocolate is completely melted.
Add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture slowly, whisking constantly to bring the eggs up to the temperature of the chocolate without cooking them. Once the mixture is fully combined, divide among six ramekins (or juice glasses, or small jelly jars, or pretty coffee mugs). Pour the water into the baking pan until it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake 30-40 minutes, and remove from oven while center still jiggles a little.
Cool at room temperature at least one hour before serving. Store in fridge up to four days.
*Note: when I let them cool for an hour, the texture was very loose, like pudding. (Not that anyone minded.) I chilled the others overnight, and the texture set properly for a much firmer dessert. Do what makes you happy. They taste delicious right out of the fridge, though!
