chocolate pudding

Making your own desserts is awesome and way better than sitting around eating a whole bag of milanos. Making cookies take a long time. Blog readers of the world: make your own goddamn pudding.

PS-- wouldn't you know it, it is kind of HARD to find good chocolate pudding recipes. Some are based on pots-de-creme: egg based. those require cute cups and a cooking savvy I just don't have. The trick: the pudding you are thinking of in your head is filed under blancmange-- which is like your basic cornstarch pudding recipe. Upside: while it is not a heavenly thing of glory you would pay like 8 bucks to eat in a restaurant, it is pretty damn close and also INSTANT GRATIFICATION.

Oh-- you know what I want, pudding. Ok, stir some milk, bloop bloop blooop, DONE.

CHOCOLATE PUDDING

2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
1 chocolate bar (semisweet)-- to taste really. I think the recipe said 4 oz and I put in a good 10. Especially if you are going to make it spicy, it's gotta be chocolately.
2 tbs cornstarch
1 tsp vanilla
(moving to San Diego edition-- 1/2 tsp chili powder, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp allspice)

Pour 1/4 cup of the milk (give or take) into the cornstarch, slowly. Go through the groovy ooblek phase into the weird watered down viscous milk stage. No lumps, now. Add the sugar to this concoction. And whatever "Mexican" spices suit your fancy.

Heat up the rest of the milk and vanilla and the chocolate broken into chunks over low heat. Now slowly pour in the cornstarch goop. Cook and stir the future pudding so that the cornstarch loses its "raw flavor"-- now, I don't know what that is, but I've never had a cornstarch pudding taste really bad so just, you know, cook it and then in the end you'll have pudding. Take it off the heat when its looking pretty firm (like 10 minutes?) and pour/glop it into little cups, wine glasses, a bowl, whatever. Stick it in the fridge.

It's pudding tiiiiiime.