Simple Chocolate Pudding

One day when the children aren't pulling me in 5 directions, maybe I'll take a cleaner photo.

The schools are doing free lunches (plus breakfast for the next day) to go while closed for Covid. Miles loves the novelty and I love having new fresh fruit and vegetables every day. But it's leaving us with a LOT of milk cartons in the fridge.

It's all skim and 1%, which isn't the best for making yogurt or cheese. So I had no choice but to try chocolate pudding.

This recipe uses pantry ingredients and doesn't require me to melt chocolate, and it's delicious. I may experiment with making it more gourmet, but there's nothing wrong with a basic chocolate pudding with cornstarch.

I followed this recipe and didn't change anything except to decrease the amount of butter.

The Recipe: (makes 6 half-pint servings)

1 1/3 c sugar

2/3 c cocoa powder

1/3 c cornstarch

pinch of salt

4 1/2 c milk

1-2 tb butter

1 tsp vanilla

In a saucepan, whisk together the sugar, cocoa powder, cornstarch, and salt. Then whisk in the cold milk.
Turn on medium heat and stir constantly until mixture reaches a boil.
Continue to stir for 1 minute of boiling.
Remove from heat and mix in butter and vanilla.
Chill in the refrigerator.

The Verdict:

Overall grade: B+

Overall reason: Nothing super special about it, but it's yummy and easy

Time to prepare: 15 minutes

Husband quote: "It has the consistency of chocolate mousse!" (I think he needs to have some better mousse.)

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