smitten kitchen » Pudding

baked pumpkin and sour cream puddings

deb — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:27:48 +0000

Sunday night, I emailed off 497 pages containing 80,392 words to my editor (846 photos had been sent over before the weekend), went to bed at 2 a.m., woke up at 6 a.m. and a few hours later came home to a completely empty apartment and two entire hours to myself — two hours to nap or just stare slack-jawed at the ceiling fan and think about nothing for a while — and decided instead that I’d had enough of this pumpkin-free November I’d been having and went back into the kitchen to make pudding. That’s normal right? That’s what normal people do, right? Wait, don’t tell me.

So, a manuscript has officially been delivered, a whole 6 hours in advance of its deadline. I am the eternal college student, apparently, though if you’d asked me 18 months ago when I was going to finish my book I could have probably told you right then “Five minutes before it is due.” I’m classy like that. I would hardly say that the cookbook process is finished — we’re still ironing out some kinks, there’s copyediting (I can’t be the only one who pities the copyeditor who must deal with the madness I pass off as grammar, right?), some reshoots, they’ve been kind enough to offer me design input though they’ll probably regret it when they see what bad taste I have… I won’t bore you with the details. But for the most part? I’m back! Whee! And there’s no place else I’d rather be.

... Read the rest of baked pumpkin and sour cream puddings on smittenkitchen.com

vanilla bean pudding

deb — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:22:09 +0000

A year ago, I would have told you that any pudding that includes eggs (or butter, cream and various other indulgences unnecessary to yield excellent pudding) is a sham. I have strong feelings about foods that I grew up with, and pudding is one of them. Pudding is thrown together quickly on a stove, thickened with cornstarch, and is the perfect January food, comforting, homey and not especially harmful to those of us still living down December’s butter-fest. And so I make cornstarch puddings; there’s a chocolate one (and a pie) and last year I mentioned briefly making a vanilla pudding but then decided to toast the sugar instead and share with you a caramel pudding.

You would not believe how many people have emailed me in the last year asking for that vanilla pudding. But here’s the thing, vanilla pudding thickened with strictly cornstarch and flavored with vanilla extract is a tasty thing, but not especially dynamic. We liked it, and you might too, but I didn’t want to spend any great amount of time discussing it until I figured out how to make it more enchanting. And I realized, over revisiting the recipe this week, that I actually prefer it with just a single little egg in there for a richer flavor, and that using vanilla bean instead of vanilla extract really really turned the humdrum into the best thing to eat while watching giant, feathery snowflakes twist and twirl outside the window.

... Read the rest of vanilla bean pudding on smittenkitchen.com

arroz con leche (rice pudding)

deb — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 01:05:57 +0000

Almost without fail, January — which is always too cold, too dull, and too overdue for an antidote for holiday excess — puts me in the mood for rice pudding and this year was no different. I played around with it all month. I made my standard. I made a “creamiest” version I found online that landed me with an undercooked eggy puddle and a wobbly belly. I made a baked version that never came together. And I caved to my husband’s repeated request for chocolate rice pudding which is something you will never see on this site because it was, hands down, the most revolting looking dish I’ve yet to ladle into a bowl. (I added 3 ounces of bittersweet chocolate added to my old favorite, and nixed the almond. See? Now I’ve saved myself a photography challenge!)

But it took me until February got me daydreaming of warmer climates to figure out what I’d really been looking for: arroz con leche. Now, here’s the thing — I did it wrong. I mean, it’s inevitable that it will seem wrong to someone who grew up eating it. There are as many versions of arroz con leche as there are Spanish-speaking grandmas who stir it up, and rarely are two versions alike. That’s the best part.

... Read the rest of arroz con leche (rice pudding) on smittenkitchen.com

caramel pudding

deb — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:52:01 +0000

This all started simply: It’s January. I don’t believe in giving up anything one enjoys but I know, I know, that only minutes past Resolution Day isn’t the best time to bring up gloppy sticky buns, 7-layer cakes, gluttonous rubber band wrists and other thoughts that have been plaguing me nonstop. I’m not trying to spread the distraction, you know? So I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to show you how easy it is to make really good vanilla pudding at home.

Pudding is one of those things that if you like to eat it, you should know how to make it. The home-cooked stuff couldn’t have less in common flavor-wise with that plastic-cupped horror show they brought me in the hospital post-baby. Real pudding takes only a little time to make, and if you do it my way (the old-school way, I like to think) there are no egg yolks or creams or custards or pats of butter. It practically runs on the treadmill for you, don’t you think?

... Read the rest of caramel pudding on smittenkitchen.com

raisin-studded apple bread pudding

deb — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:53:03 +0000

Of all the things I had anticipated about being a new mama — the sleep deprivation, the fact that sometimes babies cry for no reason, whatsoever, that they look ridiculously cute things that are too big on them — at least one of the things that I hadn’t considered was, well, the Itch. The one you get at the end of your nose nearly the second after you start feeding the baby and have not a finger free to scratch it.

It’s not always an itch, though. Sometimes it’s a just a bit of water that you need — just a sip! from that glass just two feet in front of you! Oh, how you would do anything for that sip of water! But a lot of times these days, it’s a recipe. I can’t help it. I have so little time to cook and yet these recipe ideas are getting louder and louder in my head… winter salads and tangy pies and buttery leeks and funky salsas and I have more dishes than I could cook in two hundred nap times, it seems, nonetheless in the 15 minutes of a single one that is left after I have both scratched my nose and taken that sweet, sweet sip of water.

... Read the rest of raisin-studded apple bread pudding on smittenkitchen.com

chocolate pudding pie

deb — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:58:53 +0000

A lot of times, a recipe comes with a story, and if you’re even luckier, it’s a good one. There are dishes that remind you of something your mama used to cook and unforgettable meals at far-flung restaurants that demand recreating in your own kitchen and fresh stuff that looked so pretty at the market, you had to come home and have your way with it.

This is not any of those times. I don’t have a good story about why I had to make a chocolate pudding pie this weekend or why you should before your weekend is done and gone, and I at first felt bad about this until I realized that at 37 weeks and 4 days pregnant not that anyone is counting or anything one does not need a good reason to make chocolate pudding pie — they are the definition of one. Because did you read the part about the chocolate? And pudding? And pie? I did. I saw those three words together on Gourmet.com last week and had I been craving chocolate pudding before then? No. Did I know I was fixing for some pie? Nope. Did I have a good reason to make it? Well, not exactly, but I promise you, if you make chocolate pudding pie, the people will come.

... Read the rest of chocolate pudding pie on smittenkitchen.com

best chocolate pudding

deb — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:37:18 +0000

All I wanted to give you for Valentine’s Day was some chocolate pudding. My logic was simple: decadent meals and rich desserts are dreamy things but, in my mind, not inherently romantic. More often than not, after such an evening I find myself too full for even a nightcap, quite tired and, while we are being honest, like I need to spend an hour on the treadmill. And I hate the treadmill.

But chocolate pudding is none of these things. The perfect recipe–the one I sifted through dozens and dozens to find–would be chocolaty but not overly heavy, indulgent but not too rich. In short, the kind of thing you’d want to eat with the love of your life without the risk of shortening the length of it. As a bonus, it would be a reasonable recipe to tackle on a weekday night.

... Read the rest of best chocolate pudding on smittenkitchen.com

arborio rice pudding

deb — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 20:00:07 +0000

The end of a mano? Though my mother bought it for me nearly two years ago as a Bridal Shower gift, I didn’t open my white Artisan KitchenAid until last week. Could I be more ungrateful? Possibly, but in a kitchen with only one tiny counter-top, there is no room for a heavy kitchen tool of limited use, and little reason when you’re an avid devotee of the electric hand mixer.

Oh boy, could I have been more stubbornly wrong? Perhaps what I was really afraid of was the vanilla bean effect, where one use of it would transform my relationship into an torrid love-affair, and there would be no going back. Because people, have no doubt: there is no going back.

Last weekend was the weekend of eggs by the dozen. Twelve yolks needed to be beaten into white ribbons, twelve whites needed to be reformatted as an enormous cloud, and then there were the pavlovas, plural, not to mention the giant vat of whipped cream filling. Just a few weeks ago, my work would have rewarded me with an aching arm and a most-certainly splattered kitchen wall from that moment when I wasn’t paying attention and titled the electric beaters back ever-so-slightly, because you know, that always happens. But this time, my baking left me with a distinct feeling of uselessness. My egg whites, yolk ribbons and whipped creams no longer needed me. Once I put ingredients in the bowl and turned the motor on, I could walk away and attend to other things. Freedom!

... Read the rest of arborio rice pudding on smittenkitchen.com