Creamy Chocolate Pudding
(from Bethany’s recipe box)
Serves 6
We recommend using one of our favorite dark chocolates-Callebaut Intense Dark Chocolate, L-60-40NV, or Ghirardelli Bittersweet Chocolate Baking Bar. If you like, garnish the pudding with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
Nostalgia isn’t enough to make a dessert worthwhile. To rescue chocolate pudding from obscurity, we’d have to ramp up the flavor while preserving the silky texture.
Source: America's Test Kitchen Season 12: Cool and Creamy Desserts
Categories: Desserts
Ingredients
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/2 teaspoon espresso powder
- 1/2 cup (3 1/2 ounces) sugar
- 3 tablespoons Dutch-processed cocoa
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 large egg yolks
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 2 1/2 cups whole milk
- 5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
- 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine
Directions
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Stir together vanilla and espresso powder in bowl; set aside. Whisk sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and salt together in large saucepan. Whisk in yolks and cream until fully incorporated, making sure to scrape corners of saucepan. Whisk in milk until incorporated.
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Place saucepan over medium heat; cook, whisking constantly, until mixture is thickened and bubbling over entire surface, 5 to 8 minutes. Cook 30 seconds longer, remove from heat, add butter and chocolate, and whisk until melted and fully incorporated. Whisk in vanilla mixture.
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Pour pudding through fine-mesh strainer into bowl. Press lightly greased parchment paper against surface of pudding, and place in refrigerator to cool, at least 4 hours. Whisk pudding briefly and serve.
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THE GRITTY TRUTH ABOUT COCOA BUTTER – As we developed our pudding recipe, we found that there was a limit to how much bittersweet chocolate we could add before the texture turned gritty- but that we could continue to add chocolate in the form of cocoa powder without affecting smoothness. Why should this be the case? The culprit in causing grittiness, it turns out, is cocoa butter- and solid chocolate has far more of it than cocoa powder. Chocolate is manufactured so that its fat remains solid at room temperature but literally melts in the mouth. But when melted chocolate is allowed to re-solidify, the crystalline structure of its cocoa butter is reorganized. It becomes more stable and melts at higher-than-body temperature. If present in high enough amounts, this more-stable form of cocoa butter can create the grainy mouthfeel we detected in the pudding.