I’ll say it again- I don’t know why instant pudding was invented. It’s ridiculous. Making homemade pudding is so fast and easy to begin with, how fucking lazy do you have to be to make instant pudding?! Sure, it’s good in a pinch, and the stuff that can be eaten immediately probably has it’s advantages. But really. I made this pudding in about 10 minutes, maybe 15 tops… and it had to chill for another 20-25 which was really the worst part. However, after making my own pudding, I’d never go back to a boxed pudding mix ever again. Seriously. The few times I’ve made pudding from scratch far surpassed any store-bought powdered pudding mix taste I ever had, and I found it to be not only much more gratifying but just as easy to make in most cases.

“But wait,” you say. “I never have heavy cream or cornstarch or anything in my house so a mix is easier!” Well I don’t have that problem. Because I’m constantly making homemade cupcakes, cakes, cookies, ice cream, etc; I always have these things in the house. You should too really. Maybe not the heavy cream, as most people don’t use it often. But it just so happens this particular recipe doesn’t even use heavy cream.

This is one of the quickest, easiest, tastiest homemade puddings ever. And like I said, it doesn’t even use heavy cream! Just whole milk. Six ingredients. That’s all. Have you ever counted the amount of ingredients on the side of a box of instant pudding? I bet you there’s more than six, and half of ‘em you can’t even pronounce.

HOMEMADE VANILLA PUDDING

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

Directions:

1. Heat the milk in a medium saucepan until bubbles form at edges. In a bowl, combine sugar, salt and cornstarch. Sift the ingredients to make sure they’re smooth.
2. When milk is ready, pour cornstarch mixture into the milk, a little bit at a time, stirring after each addition to completely dissolve.
3. Continue to cook and stir until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. DO NOT BOIL.
4. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and butter until thoroughly mixed. Pour into serving dishes, and chill for 20-30 minutes before serving.

Before chilling mine, I sprinkled some cinnamon sugar on top, which sort of “sank” into the warm pudding a bit, creating a little bit of a crunchy top when it chilled. Sort of like a ghetto Crème brûlée. The key to this pudding is to sift the dry ingredients, and thoroughly mix them in between each addition. If you don’t, you’ll get lumps. And no one likes a lumpy pudding.

You could use this as a base for a ton of pudding experiments. Maybe adding some lemon extract as well as vanilla? Or maybe adding caramel extract? How about making the pudding as it is, then making caramel and putting it on top kind of like a flan? Possibilities are endless. See? Just a quick post, about a quick little dessert. It probably took me longer to write this post than it did to make the pudding!

And don’t forget to enter my giveaway! It’s super easy and the prizes are pretty awesome…

Kugel (Yiddish: קוגל kugl or קוגעל; IPA: [ˈkʊɡl̩]) is a baked Jewish pudding or casserole, similar to a pie, most commonly made from egg noodles (lochshen kugels) or potatoes, though at times made of apples, spinach, broccoli, cranberry, or sweet potato. Usually served as a side dish on Shabbos and Yom Tov.

The name of the dish comes from the Germanic root meaning “ball” or “globe” (see de:Kugel_(Gericht)); thus the Yiddish name likely originated as a reference to the round, puffed-up shape of the original dishes (compare to German Gugelhupf — a type of ring-shaped cake). Nowadays, however, kugels are often baked in square pans. There is a common association of this word to the Hebrew k’iygul (“as a circle”), but this is a folk etymology.

It’s extremely easy to make and can be eaten as a sweet side dish or dessert. The awesome thing about it is that not only does it come together quickly, but kugel can be made savory or sweet.

CLAUDIA’S AMAZEBALLS SWEET NOODLE KUGEL

First you get together:

• 1 ¾ sticks of butter
• 3 ounces cream cheese (6 tablespoons)
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup apricot juice
• 8 oz. egg noodles
• 2 cups corn flakes
• 1 tsp. cinnamon

Then you:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Butter a casserole dish or baking pan. Boil the egg noodles until soft. Add the 1 stick of butter and place in casserole.
3. Cream together the cream cheese and ½ cup sugar (can be done with a mixer or in a blender). Beat in eggs.
4. Add milk and apricot juice slowly and mix well. Pour over noodles.
5. Melt the remaining ¾ stick of butter. Mix with the corn flakes and cinnamon. Top the noodles with the corn flake mixture.
6. Bake for 45 – 50 minutes.

It was a huge success over here. I don’t like apricot, so I didn’t have any myself, but the way people were “oohing” and “aahing” over it leads me to believe it was delicious.

The recipe is easily doubled, but if you’re making it in a blender, make each batch one at a time. Otherwise it’ll be too much for your blender. If you’re using a mixer, then don’t worry about it.

Say, do you think I used the word ‘pudding’ enough in that paragraph?

At any rate, making this dessert from scratch is one of the easiest things to do in the kitchen, aside from opening a bag of chips. Seriously. I don’t know why people buy those boxes of instant pudding when it’s so easy to make it homemade and you can customize it. And it tastes better too. I didn’t do anything different to mine this time, but adding a caramel sauce, or layer of homemade whipped cream in the middle, or even just using another flavor extract as well as the vanilla would be amazing. Maybe coconut? Or orange? So anyway here’s Ina’s double chocolate pudding recipe, as done by me.

DOUBLE CHOCOLATE PUDDING

Ingredients:

nocoupons

• 6 extra-large egg yolks
• ½ cup sugar
• ¼ cup cornstarch
• 3 tablespoons very good cocoa powder
• Pinch salt
• 2 cups milk
• 1-ounce very good semisweet chocolate, chopped (2 tablespoons)
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions:

1. Beat the egg yolks and sugar until light yellow and thick in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, on medium-high speed. On low speed, add the cornstarch, cocoa powder, and salt. Bring the milk to a boil in a medium saucepan and, with the mixer on low, slowly pour the hot milk into the chocolate mixture. Combine well, then pour the mixture back into the pan.
2. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon, until thickened. If the mixture begins to curdle, remove it from the heat and beat it vigorously with a wire whisk. Remove the pan from the heat, add the chocolate, butter, vanilla, and heavy cream, and mix until the chocolate and butter are melted.
3. Pour into serving bowls. Place plastic wrap directly on the top of the pudding, and chill thoroughly.

Just as a side note, how cute are ramekins?

…

This is like the best chocolate pudding ever. EVER! It has a taste very reminiscent of My-T-Fine pudding, but yet better. It’s comforting because it reminds you of the pudding you ate as a kid, but yet it’s different. Gotta love Ina.

You can use semisweet chocolate chips instead of block chocolate, it comes out just fine. Also, I bought my ramekins at Pier 1 Imports because they were a great buy (and an impulse purchase), but you can also get them on Amazon, or stores like Williams-Sonoma & Sur La Table. And probably any other cookware store you can think of.

Okay so, I never made tapioca before. I don’t even like tapioca pudding, and also I wasn’t even quite sure what exactly ‘tapioca’ was. The other two desserts I have made, and they’re easy. And I figured tapioca pudding must be simple, because homemade pudding is one of the easiest things ever to make. But I read about how it takes an hour to cook on the stove, and needs constant stirring because of the danger of scorching the milk and I was dreading it a bit.

Then I made it.

And not only did it NOT take an hour, it was so easy I could’ve done it blindfolded.

Tapioca is:

… a flavorless, colorless, odorless starch extracted from the root of the plant species Manihot esculenta. This species, native to Brazil, is now cultivated worldwide and has many names, including cassava, bitter-cassava, manioc, “mandioca”, “aipim”, “macaxeira”, “manioca”, “boba”, “yuca” (not to be confused with yucca), “Sagudana” (literally, Sagu drops)–with local variation of “Sabudana”–and “kappa”. Tapioca is a staple food in some regions and is used worldwide as a thickening agent, principally in foods. Tapioca is gluten free, and nearly protein free. The commercial form of tapioca most familiar to many people is pearl tapioca.

The name tapioca is a word derived from tipi’óka, the name for this starch in Tupi[1] This Tupi word refers to the process by which the starch is made edible. However, as the word moved out of South America it came to refer to similar preparations made with other esculents.’Tapioca’ in Britain often refers to a rice pudding thickened with arrowroot, while in Asia the sap of the sago palm is often part of its preparation.

Pearl tapioca is similar to pearl sago, which is used in essentially the same ways. Consequently, tapioca may be called sago, and vice versa.

Basically, they’re hard little white balls that soften in water. Pretty cool to see, especially when they turn translucent during cooking. Not really cool enough for me to taste it though. I think tapioca pudding will be something I’ll make for others, but not eat.

The pudding turned out amazing, I’m told. And it was amazingly easy (as most puddings are). So here’s part one of my mom’s birthday treats: tapioca pudding. The recipe tells you it takes 40-60 minutes to thicken, and I didn’t find that to be the case. For some substitutions, check out my asterisks (*).

TAPIOCA PUDDING

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup tapioca pearls (I used large, you can use whatever you like I suppose)
• 2 1/2 cups milk*
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs*
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

1. Soak tapioca in 2 cups of water overnight in refrigerator in a 2-quart saucepan or double boiler.
2. Beat the eggs lightly in a bowl until mixed. Drain water from tapioca. Add milk, sugar, salt and beaten eggs. Mix well.
3. Cook on medium heat until thickened (like I mentioned above, the recipe says this will take 40-60 min, but it didn’t take me nearly that long), stirring constantly to avoid scorching the milk. When its ready, mixture should be thick and pearls should be translucent.
4. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Serve warm or chilled, garnish with whipped cream, fruit or whatever you like.

*For a fat-free and cholesterol-free preparation, substitute skim milk for whole and 3 egg whites for the 2 eggs. For those who are lactose intolerant, lactose-free milk can also be used.

You can top this with literally almost anything. I used ground cinnamon and let people put their own whipped cream on it, but strawberries or berries, coconut or other spices could be used as well. I used parfait glasses and custard cups, but you could make it in one large bowl and serve from that as well.

The moral of today’s lesson: don’t be afraid to try new things in the kitchen. They’re rarely as difficult or time consuming as they seem. And don’t buy a mix when something is this easy!

Oh and by the way… after a brief respite, the never-ending NY rain is returning this week, aaaaand I changed my haircolor (again)- dark brown in the back, light blonde in the front:

And if you want that sweet Cupcake Rehab shirt, you can get one here. Awesome haircolor and my face not included.

Pudding is so simple to make from scratch, its almost silly to buy instant pudding. This took me no time at all, and within an hour/hour and a half it was ready to eat. I know some people in other countries aren’t sure what “instant” pudding is, so I hope this link explains it. Anyway, pudding is awesome and its fun to say (and type). Pudding. Pudding. Pudding!

BUTTERSCOTCH PUDDING

Ingredients:

• ½ cup packed dark brown sugar
• 2 tbsp plus 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 ½ cups whole milk
• ½ cup heavy cream
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into bits
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• lightly sweetened whipped cream (optional; for topping)

Directions:

1. Whisk together brown sugar, cornstarch and ¼ tsp salt in a heavy medium saucepan, then whisk in milk and cream.
2. Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking frequently, then boil for an additional minute, still whisking.
3. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and vanilla.
4. Pour into a bowl. Cover surface with buttered wax paper and chill for at least 1 ½ hours.
5. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream, if desired.

It was so good, so rich, and yet it took no time at all. The wax paper should prevent a “skin” from forming, but even if some does form, its easy to scrape off. Unless you like the skin. I most certainly don’t. And if you really want to impress people, or you have time to spare, use the leftover heavy cream to make some homemade whipped cream. Homemade is so much better than store bought. You can make this in one bowl, or pour it into custard cups or ramekins for easy serving.

And I know, I know… pudding is great, but where are the cupcakes!? Well, you’ll get a surprise this weekend. And next week there will definitely be some cupcakes as well. How could I let Valentine’s Day go by without cupcakes?