Friday, April 10, 2009

Confessions of a Pudding Ruin-er

It’s official. I’ve ruined another pudding. I’m not exactly sure what went wrong this time, but I’m fairly certain that I’m doomed to a pudding-less existence. I used a different recipe this time—recommended by a Culinista after pudding disaster #1—guaranteed to work. Needless to say, it did not. And I can no longer blame the recipe.


This recipe was not low-cal. It had eggs and butter and whole milk, and had I not ruined it, it would have been very good.


I remember saying to Jill, “this recipe is pretty easy!”, just before my pudding turned to liquid. From now on, I don’t brag until the pudding looks, even vaguely, like pudding. So, once again, this is the sad saga of my unfortunate pudding skills…….please try to find the humor.


I know how to separate eggs, use a measuring cup, and tell time—all helpful skills in the pudding making process. What I did not have was patience, perhaps the most important part of successful pudding production. Once again, everything went well until the last step. The caramel cooked beautifully, the egg yolks tempered, and the pudding thickened on the stove.


In the final stages, it said explicitly on the recipe, “let thickened pudding cool at room temperature for 10 minutes”. You guessed it. I did not let it cool for long enough. Maybe telling time is not one of my skills. Although in my defense, I think that the hot pudding needed to cool longer than 10 minutes, because the next step is to blend the just-cooked pudding in a food processor with butter. Sadly, my beautiful thickened pudding turned to liquid in the food processor. The cold butter turned to oil and thinned out my pudding to the consistency of water. The ride in the blender also did not help.


This recipe does work. You just need the patience to wait. For ten minutes. I don’t want to talk about it.


Please Jill. No more pudding assignments.

No comments:

Post a Comment