Saturday, February 26, 2011

Easy Chocolate Pudding Delight

My father stopped by the other day
with chocolate yogurt pudding cups.

The kids were in bliss,

until the next afternoon.



There were four of the cups in the pack.
There are three children in my house.

My oldest,
being big on life's math situations,
had already figured out there was only one cup left,
and had sweetly shared it with her little sister.

(Little sister is also surprisingly keen.
She is the
"I see someone is eating something at the table" child.

Nobody can deny her when it comes to sharing.)


My middle child is my son, Levi.


 
  (I found him here with the vacuum cleaner that I momentarily left in order to tend to some other emergency-type situation going on,
like an escaped baby from her play area).

He is a bit ditsy,
very like myself,
missing the important news until it's common knowledge,
even if sitting right there while it is being announced,
because of daydreaming
or
thinking about something else that is more
 intriguing or "important".

It is common for him to start randomly laughing at strange moments
when he thinks of something funny
that he saw in a movie,
or heard someone say.

Dinner is often the usual time
for these random outbursts of unrelated laughter,

or when guests are visiting
and he finds something someone says
or does

like a facial expression
or sound effect

absolutely hilarious
and we are left at a stumbling attempt
to explain why our son is laughing uncontrollably at them.


He used to sit with us during church service
and would send my husband and I 
into a red-faced embarrassment
when he'd loudly repeat an "Amen" at the end of a prayer,
or think a sound effect that the preacher had used was funny,
yes,
so funny that he could not stop laughing
an uncontrollable,
deep-seated laughter
for
several long seconds,
which,
of course,
seems like several long minutes,
when you are sitting in a church pew,
and everybody is turning around
suppressing their own laughter.

And this would be repeated at random
throughout the rest of the sermon,
when the sound effect would return inside his head
and rouse the funny thought again.

He was not being rude, mind you,
this is just the way his brain works.
He is an expressive movie-watcher,
book-reader,
story-listener.



Back to the pudding:
Levi discovered, when lifting the lid to the trashcan to throw something away,
the empty pudding cups,
and also remembered that
>YUM<
there had been one left the day before.

Unfortunately for him, his brain's lights went on
several hours after the other two's lights had flashed, shone brightly,
and then shut off after a tummy delighted
by the last cup of pudding.

Needless to say,
bitter-for-chocolate tears commenced.

My momma heart went out to him
as well as my chocolate addicted one
and I mentioned the future of MAKING chocolate pudding.

Future to this man
does not exist.

The cooking stool immediately got dragged out,
Demands to get the mixing bowl began
and
continued in 30 second intervals
until I dug out several cookbooks
looking for the best recipe.




The pan soon became a brown goo
of
chocolatey sweet thickness.


And my steadfast supervising chef
had his cup full of happiness.





Here is my chocolate pudding recipe
(adapted from several recipes)
so you can make some happy brown goo for the unsuspecting people in your home
or
for your own satisfying delight.
(I doubled this recipe: multiple household children and a mother who crave chocolate substances will require this).


Easy Chocolate Pudding:
2 cups milk
3 Tablespoons cornstarch
1//3 cup honey or sugar (I used 1/4 cup blue agave syrup)
1/4 cup cocoa
2 beaten eggs

In medium-sized saucepan, stir together the cornstarch,
honey, cocoa powder.  Carefully pour in the milk, turn 
the stove on to medium heat, and whisk constantly 
(I'm a slothful whisker, so I just stir a few times a minute 
in the beginning until I see it's starting to get hot; 
then I whisk constantly because I don't want it to burn).   
Whisk until it comes to a boil (turn down to low heat 
once it starts to boil) and stir until it thickens.  Scoop some 
of the hot mixture into a glass measuring cup or bowl,
and slowly ad the beaten eggs, stirring so that they do not "cook"
into egg pieces..  Then ad this to the saucepan, stirring constantly
for 1 minute.  Pour into a glass bowl and cool.  
Enjoy.

Refrigerate the left-overs,

if there are any.


2 comments:

  1. You do know that the fourth cup was supposed to be yours right? My mom always used to make warm pudding and I love it. It is hard to make without scorching however. I like this recipe.

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  2. Yes, I did think that maybe that pudding should have been mine...after the smarter women had already eaten it. :)

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