Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Chocolate custard pudding

What do you do when you have a dozen egg yolks? In summer, that would be a couple batches of ice cream. But once the weather gets even a little bit chilly, I lose the urge for frozen desserts and move on to non-frozen  desserts.

I decided to whip up some pudding. This is eggier than many pudding recipes, but I was determined to use all the egg yolks, and I didn't want to end up with a gallon of pudding.

To compensate for the extra thickening power of the eggs, I backed off a bit on the usual amount of cornstarch.

This is a rich pudding, but fairly light on the chocolate - it's got the flavor of dark chocolate, but not super-strong. If you're looking for a dark chocolate pudding, use two bars of chocolate instead of one.

For the chocolate, I used Green & Black's, which comes in 3.5-ounce bars. You can certainly use another brand, and if if happens to come in a slightly larger bar, it's fine to use the extra chocolate in the pudding. Or have a snack. Either is fine.

Chocolate Custard Pudding

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole milk
1 1/2 cups heavy cream (or use all milk)
12 egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 3.5-ounce bar Green & Black's 70% dark chocolate*

Combine the sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Whisk to combine. Add the milk, whisking as you add it. The idea is that you don't want the cornstarch to be lumpy before you start heating the mixture.

Add the cream and eggs yolks and whisk to combine.
Heat the mixture slowing, stirring as you go. If you heat too quickly, the mixture will clump and you'll end up with a mess. Heat slowly and keep stirring, and you'll have a smooth pudding.

If you have a few little bumps in the pudding, that's fine - you can strain them out.

Continue cooking and stirring until the mixture thickens and it begins to bubble.

Turn the heat off and add the vanilla and chocolate. Stir until the chocolate melts, then pass the mixture through a strainer into a storage container.

Cover and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled.

Serve cold.

*Of course you can use a different chocolate, but this is the one I used. This is NOT a sponsored post. I've worked with Green & Black's in the past, but I've gone through a lot of chocolate since then.
Yum