What is more satisfying, or more nostalgic, than a chocolate pudding cup?
When I was starting out in pastry, in the way-back of the early 2000s, I was dedicated to appealing to diners my own age. We were all learning how to be adults in the world, and part of this included dining in restaurants as bigger versions of our smaller, former selves. I wanted to find a way to bring those diners back to a very specific feeling of sitting on the wall-to-wall shag carpet, legs tucked under their little bodies, inches from a giant panel television, spoon stuck into something that made them feel their earliest waves of deep comfort. A little sentimentality never hurt anyone. In fact, it is pretty good fuel in a kitchen.
Recipe: Chocolate Pudding Cups
I’m pretty sure many chefs of my generation started cooking for similar reasons. We grew up in an era when food was transitioning from daily chore to convenience and even pleasure — a time when it was becoming more acceptable for mothers to not cook every last thing, when wayward latchkey kids like me could have a sweet treat just waiting for us in the refrigerator, as if it was no big deal. Chocolate pudding, cheap and simple, neither laborious nor meant for any kind of special occasion, was a fixture, ready to be enjoyed alone with our books, our albums, our radios and our televisions.
So I set out to find a perfect pudding recipe many years later, and I became enamored, as pastry chefs are wont to do, with French form. Pots de crème caught my eye, and later I flirted with the Italian budino, which, if I’m being honest, this recipe more closely identifies with.
‘Is it the pudding cup of our childhood? Not quite, no. But it started there.’
I grew up with a more American version, softer, typically a cornstarch, whole milk, easy-on-the-cream situation. That is a beautiful thing in its own right, a pudding for the ages. But there is a keen difference between those softer, American cornstarch-whole milk versions and the European yolk-cream ones, and acknowledging that feels like a respectful and important nod to the cooking-alchemy gods.
It’s true that, on occasion, I’ll pull out a cornstarch-based “traditional” (to Americans) pudding. These, to my mind, are best when they feel lighter, silky and soft — kind of like the ones, long ago, that filled a shiny-lidded container jostled around in your lunchbox. But I couldn’t let go of the fascination I felt with a richer, smoother affair, one that almost makes you feel the chocolate melting in your mouth, though it melted long ago in a hot custard. As I became more worldly about pudding, those after-school memories gave way to new ones, more grown-up ones, a discovery of how hot crème anglaise poured over bittersweet chocolate would taste and feel so remarkably different from what I knew in my childhood — and so extraordinary.
For this rich chocolate pudding, it only made sense to give it all the fat, all the eggs, all the cream, encouraging them all to play together with the bittersweet chocolate. The resulting delicate density wasn’t anything I had experienced before, each bite its own education in the importance of not just flavor but texture, every spoonful encouraging you to go as slowly as you can, letting it sit on your tongue just long enough to not be perverse.
Is it the pudding cup of my childhood? Not quite, no. But it started there and is a pretty decent version for my adult whims and wishes, one with a simple lesson in custard technique. And more important, it’s one that creates a moment when you can feel like the little kid you once were, licking the chocolate from a peel-off lid — this time without any of the worries of nicking the corners of your mouth.
The post An Easy Chocolate Pudding to Delight Your Inner Child appeared first on New York Times.
