I'd assumed that pudding was one of those death-in-a-jar foods invented
by a megacorporation, so in the past several years I hadn't given even a
thought to eating it, even though I've got lots of fond childhood
memories of wallowing in chocolate pudding.  Then I ran across a pudding
recipe in _Laurel's Kitchen_, a paragon of non-fat good-for-you
cooking.  The ingredients turned out to be surprisingly simple, and
mostly not bad for you.
Here's the recipe, modified a la Valerie:

2 cups milk, preferably nonfat
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt (I leave this out)
2 tablespoons arrowroot or cornstarch
1 teaspoon vanilla

optional: 1 square baking chocolate

Gently heat 1 1/2 cups of the milk (and the chocolate, if you are using
it) in a heavy pan.  Stir in the sugar and salt.

Combine the cornstarch or arrowroot with the reserved milk.  Add to the
rest of the milk when it is very hot; cook and stir over low heat until
thick.  If you are using cornstarch, continue to cook and stir over very
low heat for a few minutes more.  If you want a richer version, you can
stir a beaten egg into 1/2 cup of the pudding, then beat that into the
whole pudding while it is still very hot.  Cool somewhat and add
vanilla.  Makes about 2 cups to serve 4 -- in theory.  Sometimes it
actually serves two.  Good warm or cold.

----------
Another variation: I've made this recipe about 3 times.  It came out
surprisingly good the time I cut the sugar in half, substituted soymilk
for cow's milk, and added two sliced bananas along with the vanilla.
When the bananas were in, I whisked it together to break up the bananas
into roughly oneentimeter-sized hunks.  Breaking up the hunks with a whisk
seemed to release some banana flavor into the rest of the pudding.

In one batch, I heated all the milk, then stirred the arrowroot into
warm milk.  It formed transparent little globbets inside the pudding,
but it tasted OK.

If you add chocolate, it'll look sort of separated up until the very end.
Don't panic!  It eventually smooths out and looks like chocolate pudding.

11 responses total.

You know, I used to go to YMCA Storer Camps in the sumer for a few 
consecutive years.  Then I stopped up until that eighth grade trip
that almost all Ann Arbor Middle Schools take.  Year after year,
Bimbola and his croies would serve chocolate pudding.  Upon looking
it, you could have sworn it was light brown, soft plastic.  Upon
actually eating it (ick.), it caused Diherea (sp?) within one hour,
if you did not take medication like Pepto Bismol immedatley after
eating.  After I while, in eigth grade to be exact, I actually managed
to eat four bowls without any foul effect.  Well, at least until 0000
Hours the next day, when it took an embarrasing toll.

Yuk!

My sentiments exactly.  Especially taking a shower about a mile away from
the cabin, on a cold winter night at 0100 hours.

I make tapioca pudding once in a while and Silvia makes rice pudding
every now and then.  Like a lot of foods, homemade is many times
better than the stuff that comes in plastic.

Would you like to reveal your secret recipe?

Dumb question: what *is* tapioca?

re #5: Do you want my recipe or my wife's?

re #6: From the American Heritage Dictionary: A beady starch obrained
from the root of the cassave, used for puddings and as a thickening
agent in cooking.

Basically, it's just something to make the milk and sugar stick
together.

Both recipes, please!

Re#7: Definatley both!

The other day I made two different versions of low-fat chocolate
pudding.  One was a Mollie Katzen recipe using silken tofu and
cocoa that is not cooked.  The second is out of the Moosewood
Low-Fat Favorites cookbook, and is cooked.  The Moosewood recipe
comes closest to an old fashioned 50's style flavor and texture.

I remembered Valerie had entered something here about chocolate pudding,
and I decided to see how her version differed from Moosewood's.  (Was it
really 1994?) 

The recipes are so close it's to quibble over fractions.  Moosewood calls
for 3 tablespoons regular sugar, 3 tablespoons cornstarch, and omits salt.
Valerie's, from "Laurel's Kitchen" calls for 1/4 cup brown sugar and
2 tablespoons of thickener.

It's a quick chocolate fix.  

These days I make the pudding with 3 tablespoons of cornstarch, never with
arrowroot (arrowroot = tummyache for me), and use 1/4 cup of white sugar. 
That's intriguing that the two recipes are so close.

I've been trying to do a junk-food-free pregnancy, but sometimes pudding is
the only way to get enough milk into me in a day.  I've always been an avid
milk drinker, yet for a lot of my first trimester (now over) I found it very
hard to get through a glass of milk.  It was like my body was saying "no".
Weird.  My body practically never says "no" to pudding.  So much for the
theory that it's easier to eat things that are healthier.  Left to eat
whatever I liked with no thought to nutrition, I think I would eat chocolate
cake all the time.  :S

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