CHOCOLATE PUDDING

Once again we have a recipe to test, chocolate pudding.  The goal of the recipe is to create a pudding with a silky texture and a rich chocolate flavor.  As before this recipe was sent to us from Cook's Illustrated.  I took 56 pictures of Marty doing the majority of this recipe.   I did a little stirring and a whole lot of washing up.  I have selected less than 20 to show him hard at work. Remember to click on the pictures to enlarge them.

 This is a line up of most of the ingredients. Eggs and some of the chocolate aren't there yet.

 Marty melted the bittersweet chocolate in the microwave. Here he is stirring to even out the temperature. I took a picture of it in the microwave, didn't turn out so well.  So no picture to post.

 This is cornstarch, cocoa powder, sugar, and salt being sifted into the pan.

 Light cream being added to dry ingredients.

 Eggs being separated, only the yolks will be used.

 Yolks being added to the pan.  All of this is still cold, so no problem of it becoming chocolate scrambled eggs.

 Yolks being stirred in.

 Whole milk added.

 Melted chocolate added in.

 The heat is on and constant stirring required.  I did some and then went back to the camera and let Marty work.

 Checking temperature.  Look how glossy the chocolate is.

 No, I did not mess up and blur the picture.  That is steam coming off the pudding.  It is being poured into a strainer.  Little bits of chocolate and eggs need to be removed.
More steam as the pudding oozes out of the strainer.  The blurry yellow is the spatula Marty is hitting on the side of the strainer.

 Butter and vanilla are stirred into the pudding to finish it.

 Plastic wrap covers it to prevent a crust forming as it cools.

 Ready for the taste test.

And Marty takes his first bite.  Our judgement on the recipe:  It meets its goals.  It was silky, it had a rich chocolate flavor. It is good. Would we make it again, probably not as written. 

This did not ring our chimes on the chocolate flavor.  Even though Marty is totally a dark chocolate person, he wanted the sweeter flavor from his childhood. Or of the chocolate pie I make.  Me too.  Semi sweet chocolate would make us happier.  Also with the work involved in making this (not that hard, but takes some time and effort) I thought it should have something like Grand Marnier in it. It needed a little more elegance for the fancy expensive chocolate used.