Best ever chocolate pudding
Way back in 2013 my friend Nev sent me this chocolate pudding recipe from A Cup of Jo and indeed it was great. I think I made it twice then promptly forgot about it. But then this week a Smitten Kitchen ad for Best Chocolate Pudding popped up on Facebook and made me want to try it.
So Alma and I made it together last week. She said it was not quite as good as the chocolate pudding they serve at preschool. I thought it was much, much too sweet. And oddly, even though I used 85% chocolate my pudding was quite light in color, nothing like the dark brown color on the photos on the website. Strange. In any case, I wasn’t very impressed and next time I want to make pudding I’m going to return to the Cup of Jo recipe. Here’s the difference in ingredients, in case you’re curious. Basically the SK recipe doubles the cornstarch and omits the egg, uses more sugar and less salt, and twice the amount of chocolate (but no cocoa powder).
| A Cup of Jo Recipe | Smitten Kitchen Recipe |
| 3 cups (710 ml) whole milk | 3 cups (710 ml) whole milk |
| 1/3 cup (75 grams) granulated sugar | 1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar |
| 2 tbsp. cornstarch | 1/4 cup (30 grams) cornstarch |
| 2 large egg yolks | – |
| 1/4 tsp. salt | 1/8 teaspoon salt |
| 2 tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder | – |
| 3 oz. (85 grams) dark or semi-sweet chocolate, finely chopped | 6 ounces (170 grams) semi- or bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped |
| 1 tsp. vanilla extract | 1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract |
Indian rice pudding
I was making an Indian dinner for company, and Derek decided that he needed to make rice pudding for dessert. He used this recipe from Alton Brown. The recipe has received excellent reviews. I’ve never had a rice pudding I’ve loved, so I had pretty low expectations. But I enjoyed it. The raisins and pistachios were tasty, and I liked the freshly ground cardamom. (I’d probably add even more if we ever make rice pudding again.) That said, given all the wonderful desserts in the world, I don’t think this one is worth the calories. Derek had higher expectations than me, and ended up a bit disappointed. He thought there was too much rice and in general just too much “stuff.” Read the rest of this entry »
Silken chocolate tofu pie
One of the desserts I remember best form childhood is silken chocolate tofu pie. I know, it doesn’t sound that great, but it was creamy and rich and chocolately and sweet… I loved it. My mom used to bake it in a graham cracker crust which made it even better. But I also loved it uncooked right out of the food processor. When I lived in the co-op I used to make the pudding with lemon juice or grapefruit juice for a little extra bite. I liked the stark contrast between the sweet pudding and the sour juice. Other co-op denizens didn’t like the combination of citrus and chocolate and soy as much as I did. I didn’t mind though, because that way there was more for me. I tried making the pudding for Derek long ago, but he was disturbed by the strong underlying soy flavor, so I stopped making it. But last month I had a few boxes of silken tofu lying around that needed to get used up, and so I decided to try making tofu chocolate pudding again. Read the rest of this entry »
Sticky toffee pudding
Derek has been raving about sticky toffee pudding for a little over a year now. I finally got to try it when we went to Scotland last September. I tried a number of different restaurant versions, and although I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like most of them seemed to miss the mark a little. Derek wanted to try to make it at home, and I said fine–next time we have company. Well, a few weeks ago, right before leaving for Spain, we ended up with 5 guests over for dinner. The menu was mostly Italian (salad with roasted winter veggies and walnuts, white bean soup with fennel and rosemary, and cacio e pepe pasta). But our dessert was Scottish.
Derek looked around online to try to find a recipe for the kind of moist sticky toffee pudding that he prefers, and ended up selecting a sticky date toffee pudding recipe that had excellent reviews on epicurious.com. I printed out the recipe, but unfortunately didn’t read the reviews myself. If I had, I would have been more prepared for what followed. Read the rest of this entry »
Tofu pumpkin pudding
When I was a kid I used to love my mom’s tofu pudding. My favorite flavors were chocolate and pumpkin (but not together). Sometimes she’d make a pie by pouring the pudding into a pie crust and then baking it, but more often we’d just eat it as a pudding, sans crust. Read the rest of this entry »
The captious vegetarian 