BAKED Sunday Mornings: Vanilla Bean and Chocolate Budino

Happy Purim!  If you came here looking for some hamentashen (triangle cookies), you can find them here or here or here.  I didn't have it in me to make any this year, although I've always wanted to try my friend Shoshana's S'more Hamentashen.  However, I've been away and I have a huge Purim program today, so no hamentashen for us this year.

But, I do have some pudding for you (which reminded me of Dorie's Split Level pudding but not quite as rich).  Technically this is a budino, which is apparently an Italian custard or pudding, so pudding is fine.  Budino just makes it sound super fancy.  Despite the fact that this pudding used many, many bowls and pans, it was quite easy to make.  The thickening power mostly comes from cornstarch, so you can't screw it up.  My pudding was a little lumpy, but I don't really mind.  I really enjoyed the flavor of these puddings, both separately and together and I love the way the vanilla one looked with all the vanilla bean seeds sprinkled throughout.  If you want a dessert that looks impressive but is easy to make, you should totally try this.  You can get the recipe here and head over to Baked Sunday Mornings to see what everyone else did.

Happy Purim!  

Not Pretty, but Totally Delicious: Four Star Chocolate Pretzel Challah Bread Pudding

Some things are really hard to photograph.  Bread pudding is one of them.  It just looks like a mushy, lumpy mess.  But let me tell you -- this is the best tasting mushy, lumpy mess I have ever tasted.  This is Dorie Greenspan's Four Star Chocolate Bread Pudding, which I made with an LA specialty, pretzel challah.  Pretzel challah is challah on the inside, but with a soft-pretzel crust on the outside.  Yummy.

Every week, my son's preschool has a fundraiser where you can buy a challah for Shabbat.  Since we love challah and we want to support the school, we signed up.  However, it has meant that our freezer often gets super full of challah because we don't always have Shabbat dinner at home.  This bread pudding came about because I simply could not fit another challah in the freezer and I'm so glad I made it.  It takes about 10 minutes to throw together (if you don't count the time waiting for the bread to become stale) and the only complicated thing about it is that it is baked in a water bath, so you need a pan big enough to hold a 9x13 inch pan.

This was completely delicious and decadent   I loved the combination of the slightly salty pretzel challah with the sweet and chocolatey pudding.  It was a real treat.  If you find yourself with an extra pretzel challah, I highly recommend making this, although I assume it would be delicious with any kind of bread.  You can find the recipe here.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Mississippi Mud Pie (B)

As I have mentioned, I am the official office cake baker.  Whenever someone has a birthday, I find out what they want and I make the best version I can find.  I also make cakes when people leave and for other office occasions.  In the past couple of weeks we have had 1 graduation, 1 birthday, 2 people leaving and 1 person converting to Judaism.  That's a lot of cake.  I had said I was on cake maternity leave until after baby #2 arrives in a few weeks, but it seems I just can't help myself.


There is a woman who has been helping out in our office who converted to Judaism this week.  She said she likes things that are cake and chocolate and when I saw this coming up for Baked Sunday Mornings, I figured she would really enjoy this cake.


This is a serious cake -- oreo crust, flourless chocolate cake, chocolate pudding and whipped cream.  You have to really like chocolate.  Despite all those layers, this cake is lighter than I thought it would be.  The whipped cream is totally necessary to lighten things up and neither the cake layer nor the pudding layer are too sweet.


I did learn something very important with this cake.  Most of the time, especially when I make things with a graham cracker crust, I just crush the cookies in a bag with a rolling pin instead of getting the food processor dirty.  I did that with this cake, but it did not work well.  The crust was too chunky and hard to cut and it took up too much room in the pan, so there was not room for all the pudding.  Next time, the food processor is coming out.  It was still delicious though.  Don't be scared of all the steps -- you can actually do a lot of them at once.  While the crust is cooling, make the cake.  While the cake is baking, make the pudding.  Then put the cake and the pudding in the fridge to cool and all you have to do the next morning is assembly.  I highly recommend this cake for other chocoholics in your life.  Check out the Baked Sunday Mornings website for the recipe and to see what other bakers did.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Peanut Butter Chocolate Cream Pie

On the outside, this looks like this week's Baked Sunday Mornings assignment, Peanut Butter Banana Cream Pie, but on the inside it is NOT!  As readers of this blog may know, I really do not enjoy bananas.  However, I wanted to bake this week because I haven't made any of the most recent selections.  I went back and forth between making this as is and pawning it off on people or adapting it so that it was something I wanted to eat.  In the end, I decided that it is always good to to want to eat what I bake, and I adapted this pie and brought it to our end of the year staff meeting at school.  It was a big hit!

I did a couple of things differently than the recipe called for.  For the crust, I didn't bother with the food processor.  I just crushed up the vanilla wafters with a rolling pin, mixed in the melted butter and mixed it with the sugar.  It turned out fine -- just like a graham cracker crust.

My main adaptation was to change the banana pudding into chocolate pudding.  Instead of the vanilla bean and the bananas, I used 1/3 cup of cocoa powder.  The pudding was a little lumpy before it was set, but it was smooth once we ate it.  I made the peanut butter topping as written and the whole combination was terrific.  It was almost totally gobbled up at the meeting, but I tried to take a picture of what it looked like with the different layers.  Not my most successful photo, but you get the idea.  You can see the unmodified recipe here and also check out what other bakers created.

Two Desserts in One: Pudding Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mmm, pudding. Who doesn't like pudding? I love pudding on its own, for its cool and smooth flavor. But I also think pudding is often a great addition to other desserts because it adds a nice layer of moisture and flavor to whatever you're cooking. The White Chocolate Cheesecake I make has pudding, which I think it part of the reason I like it so much. So when I found a chocolate chip cookie recipe with pudding as a main ingredient, I had to try it.

When I went to the store, all they had was sugar free white chocolate pudding mix, which I would not have chosen if I had had another option. I felt like the cookies tasted a little artificial, but my friend who ate them with me said she thought they tasted great. Other than that, these cookies are pretty good. I liked the consistency of the cookies-- they were very moist and didn't get all flat when I baked them. They weren't so so exciting, but if you like chocolate chip cookies, you would probably like these. I think one day I'll try them again, but with chocolate pudding and white chocolate chips.

You can find the recipe after the jump.

Dorie's Chocolate Pudding: Not Like Jello

So, first let me say that it is really, really hard to photograph chocolate pudding. It just looks kind of...yuck. Even in the cute bowls that my friend Brooke gave me and are really ice cream bowls. If anyone out there has any suggestions for photographing pudding (or food in general), let me know. I am happy for the tips.

However, even if it looks yucky, it tastes YUMMY! Rich but light at the same time. I do think it would have benefited from a dollop of whipped cream, which I will try to remedy the next time I eat it. This was some seriously good pudding. Now, I like Jello pudding as much as the next person, but if you are looking for a real treat, this pudding is it. My pudding was a little more like mousse in texture than pudding, but it was still delicious.

I made some modifications to Dorie's recipe. First, instead of 2 1/4 cups of whole milk, I used one cup of skim and 1 1/4 cups of whole. I don't think it affected the texture or the taste at all. Second, I don't have a food processor for dairy (it is parve, so that I can use it to make things like sauces and such), so I used a blender instead. I wonder if use of the blender contributed to the mousse-like texture, since it may have gotten more air than with a food processor. Third, I didn't put it back in the blender at the end of the recipe -- I just whisked in the butter, melted chocolate and vanilla. I know this is ok, because Dorie herself said so. Oh, and I don't like skin on my pudding, so I made a tight seal with the saran wrap before putting it in the fridge. Finally, I didn't put it in ramekins, but it one big container.

Here is the recipe (from doriegreenspan.com and Baking from My Home to Yours):

CHOCOLATE PUDDING

Makes 6 servings

2 1/4 cups whole milk

6 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 large egg

2 large egg yolks

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and still warm

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Getting Ready: Have six ramekins or pudding cups, each holding 4 to 6 ounces (1/2 to 3/4 cup), at hand.

Bring 2 cups of the milk and 3 tablespoons of the sugar to a boil in a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan.

While the milk is heating, put the cocoa, cornstarch and salt into a food processor and whir to blend. Turn them out onto a piece of wax paper, put the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar, the egg and egg yolks into the processor and blend for 1 minute. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, add the remaining 1/4 cup milk and pulse just to mix, then add the dry ingredients and pulse a few times to blend.

With the machine running, very slowly pour in the hot milk mixture. Process for a few seconds, then put everything back into the saucepan. Whisk without stopping over medium heat - making sure to get into the edges of the pan - until the pudding thickens and a couple of bubbles burble up to the surface and pop (about 2 minutes). You want the pudding to thicken, but you don't want it to boil, so lower the heat if necessary.

Scrape the pudding back into the processor (if there's a scorched spot, avoid it as you scrape) and pulse a couple of times. Add the chocolate, butter and vanilla and pulse until everything is evenly blended.

Pour the pudding into ramekins. If you don't want a skin to form (some people think the skin is the best part), press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface of each pudding to create an airtight seal. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Black and White and Pudding All Over

This week is the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. On Sukkot, Jews are commanded to make their sukkot (little booths) like their homes, and one of the ways to do that is to eat in your sukkah. That means all meals must be eaten outside and a meal is anything that involves bread or cake or things like that. Since we don't have a sukkah, and we have a baby, sometimes it a challenge to get to a sukkah, so I have to be creative about what to eat (especially for dessert) if I can't get to a sukkah. Since most cake and cookies are out, pudding seemed like a good option. I saw on Tuesdays with Dorie that they were making split level pudding this week (Tuesdays with Dorie is a group that bakes a recipe from Dorie each week and posts it on Tuesdays) and I decided to bake along.

I had a little trouble with the texture of this pudding. Although I have made ganache a number of times, this time, it came out kind of grainy. Don't know why. In addition, the vanilla pudding looked amazing after I cooked it on the stove and was just the right texture. However, the recipe says to put it back in the blender for a minute after cooking and all of a sudden it was liquid. I whisked in some more cornstarch, which, after letting it set in the fridge, I think was a mistake. It has more of the texture of flan than pudding now. I should have just left it after taking it off the stove.

Even with all the problems, it was delicious. I think I am going to try Dorie's chocolate pudding next. Don't you just love pudding?

You can find the recipe here, on the blog of the person who chose it for Tuesdays with Dorie. Let me know if you make this and if you solve the texture problems.