Almost-Instant Chocolate Vegan Pudding
In the same time it takes to make boxed chocolate pudding, you can make real chocolate that’s thick and creamy, very chocolatey, refined-sugar-free, cholesterol-free, allergen safe, pareve too.
If anyone here is from Brooklyn and remembers the iconic Ebinger’s Blackout Cake, this is the pudding I use to make the you’ll never know its vegan version. I have seen grown people weep.
Ingredients
- Full recipe:
- 1 /2 cup organic granulated sugar or use coconut sugar which I did for LunchBreak Live
- 1/4 cup organic cornstarch do not use arrowroot, see Note
- 1/4 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 15 ounces (1 1 ⁄2 cups plus 6 tablespoons) plant milk, oat, soy, almond
- 2 ounces chocolate 59 to 62%, chopped into small pieces or use chocolate chips
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Instructions
- Sift the sugar, cornstarch, cocoa powder, and salt through a wire mesh strainer into a medium saucepan. Stir in the milk, until no trace of the dry ingredients is visible.
- Cook over medium-high heat, whisking frequently until the mixture begins to thicken and is close to a boil. Adjust the heat as needed to get a full boil, but don’t let it be so high that the bottom scorches. As soon as the pudding starts to boil, it will thicken to pudding consistency. Immediately lower the heat and boil gently for another minute, stirring frequently with a silicone spatula.
- Remove the saucepan from the heat. Add the chocolate into the hot pudding and stir with the silicone spatula until the chocolate is melted. Now add the vanilla.
- Spoon the pudding into serving dishes. It is ready to eat as soon as it is warm, not hot, but it can be refrigerated for up to 2 days. Skin or no skin on your pudding? To avoid the skin that forms on the pudding as it cools, cover the pudding directly with parchment or plastic wrap. A certain neighbor licks the paper. I do too.
Notes
Note: The cornstarch is crucial to get the right texture for this pudding. Using another starch thickener, such as my usual first choice arrowroot, would result in pudding with a soft and unpleasant texture.
Full recipe makes about 21⁄3 cups
Note: It freezes too, tastes like Fudgesicle!)
Recipe reprinted with permission from Vegan Chocolate: Unapologetically Luscious and Decadent Dairy-Free Desserts, by Fran Costigan (Running Press)