Tuesdays With Dorie: Chocolate Pudding

This week’s recipe is Chocolate Pudding, chosen by Melissa of It’s Melissa’s Kitchen (you can find the recipe there). I have this to say to Melissa: Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you. (And check out all the other TWDers here.)

My family has a recipe for chocolate pudding. We make it five or six times a year, and it’s really good. When you consider the fact that it’s low-fat, it’s amazing. It’s not one of those recipes that you eat because it’s low-fat, even though it’s not nearly as good as the real thing. This chocolate pudding really is as good as the real thing. (I’ll post the recipe below.)

But Dorie’s Chocolate Pudding is so unbelievably, phenomenally, breathtakingly fabulous (I’ve run out of words!) that it’s in a class by itself.

I made it almost as written, except that I substituted one cup of half-and-half and one cup of skim milk for the two cups of whole milk, because that’s what I had. I’m going to try it again with all skim to see what happens — I bet it will still be amazing.

There were a lot of steps — this recipe is certainly considerably more complex than my old standby. It’s not something I’d want to dash off in a hurry. I measured all the ingredients out first — I often measure out some, but it’s rare that I’ll have everything done in advance — and enlisted #2 Son to melt the chocolate while I got started on the other steps.

It all worked, though, and (except for a bit of food processor overflow) turned out stunningly. I really have no words to describe it, so here are some photos:

My Chocolate Pudding (not Dorie’s)

¾ cup sugar
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
4 tablespoons cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
2 cups skim milk
1 tablespoon vanilla

Combine cocoa powder, cornstarch, salt, and milk in a medium saucepan. Stir to combine well and then cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, till pudding starts to thicken, then remove from heat. (Just when to take it off the heat is a matter of preference, and the only way to figure out how you like it is to experiment. It will thicken more as it cools.) Stir in vanilla. Pour into a one-quart casserole dish or four small ramekins; top with parchment paper to avoid a skin if you’d like. This pudding is awesome warm, room temperature, or cold, so eat as you see fit.