chocolate pudding

Love is a strange thing. 

It can be as small as buying a new place mat for the meows food dishes.

Or keeping your hot pink prom dress for ten years before donating it.

It can be overpaying for a dozen roses on a Tuesday.

Pvr-ing Ellen so you can watch Sophia Grace and Rosie talk about the Grammy's.

But mostly in our house, it's about chocolate pudding.

With an impending arrival, we decided to keep it low key in our house for the big love day. We usually don't go out for Valentine's day anyways, but we didn't want to plan anything crazy just in case we were going to be making our way to the hospital. 

The husband bought me roses, I made him chocolate pudding. It was a fair trade.

The husband has a small "obsession" with pudding. He loves the pre-made cups of pudding and has been known to eat several each night. But the past few weeks, he's told himself he doesn't need the pudding sand has been on a pudding-free diet. So as my show of affection, I made chocolate pudding for our love day dessert. 

If you've never made homemade pudding, or just attempted the powdered mix from a box, don't be scared. It's not different than heating milk on the stove and whisking constantly. The result is better than any box mix or pre-made cup that you are going to find. It's creamy, dreamy, chocolaty, perfectly set, and topped with a dollop of sweetened whipped cream and dusted with cocoa powder, it's more fancy than any overpriced cake you'll buy on Valentine's day.

Chocolate pudding

[ from Martha Stewart ]

1/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 tablespoons unsweetened dutch process cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 cups milk, I used non-fat but you can use any kind of milk

2 large egg yolks

4 oz semi-sweet chocolate, roughly chopped or 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

whipped cream for topping (optional)

In a medium sauce pan, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, cocoa powder, and salt. Add the milk and egg yolks and whisk until combined. Over medium-low heat, whisking constantly, cook mixture for 8 - 10 minutes or until it thickens. Remove pan from heat and whisk in chopped chocolate and butter, until completely melted. 

Pour pudding mixture through a fine-mesh sieve into a bowl. Cover the top of the pudding with a piece of plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming, unless you like pudding skin, then leave uncovered. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, until cool and set. Divide pudding into 4 servings and top with sweetened whipped cream and dust with cocoa powder.

butterscotch pudding

The husband and I finally opened a joint bank account today.

It seems weird that it's taken us this long before we opened one, but we never felt the need for it before hand. Even though we've been living together for over 6 years, married for over a year, we just never thought we needed it.

Well with me going on maternity leave in 71 days (who's counting?), moving in 30 days, we needed to merge everything together.

Let us celebrate by eating a bucketful of pudding!

Didn't really feel like chocolate, vanilla is too plain, butterscotch is perfect.

Full of all my favourite ingredients, brown sugar, butter, cream, and vanilla. Cooked until thick, spooned into fancy glasses, chilled, then served with chopped milk chocolate.

The perfect ending to the evening our lives finally merged.

Butterscotch pudding
[ adapted from David Lebovitz ]

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons cornstarch
2 1/2 cups whole milk
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add brown sugar and salt, stir until sugar is thoroughly moistened. Remove from heat.

In a small bowl, whisk together the cornstarch and 1/4 cup milk. Whisk until no lumps of cornstarch remain, whisk in eggs.

Gradually pour the remaining milk into the brown sugar, whisking constantly, then follow with the cornstarch mixture. Return saucepan to heat.

Bring mixture to a boil, whisking frequently. Once it starts to bubble, turn the heat to low and whisk constantly for about a minutes, or until mixture thickens to the consistency of hot fudge sauce.

Remove from heat, stir in vanilla. Ladle into glasses or cups, refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving. Serve with chopped chocolate and whipped cream.

a baker's dozen:chocolate chip bread pudding

Being the first of my 13 challenges, I was hoping this would be a easy task. I have to say for the most part it was, but there are so many great recipes out there it was hard to decide. After looking through many cookbooks and checking out all of my favourite sites, one site ceases to let me down. Epicurious. If you've never visited this website, you need to. Get off facebook and go there now. It is a mecca of foodie tips, tricks and has an infinite amount of recipes for boiled water to a buche de noel .

Trusty epi gave the recipe, now I just needed to wrangle my ingredients. I always have fresh free-range, free-run eggs for a local farm that I buy once a week. They are always different shapes, sizes, colours and I love them for that. The only things I needed to pick up was cream and the egg bread. No big deal right? Wrong.

arborio rice pudding

After sleeping a glorious eleven hours last night, I woke up this morning with a purpose.  Make rice pudding. The husband and I love rice pudding. It's creamy, vanilla studded goodness is the epitome of the perfect Sunday dessert.  And just like most things, homemade rice pudding cannot be beat.