lsanderson | Food -- Chocolate is food? (Reply)

You Call That Pudding, Grandma?
By MELISSA CLARK

I HAD no intention of making chocolate ice cream. I wanted only the perfect chocolate pudding.

For years, when striving to make the ultimate, silky, profoundly fudgy chocolate pudding, I invariably looked to Grandma. Oh, not to either of my Grandmas, who relied on boxed mixes with pallid results. But to an iconic silver-haired Grandma whom I envisioned stirring a pot of farm fresh milk, eggs, cornstarch and melted chocolate to a creamy, intense perfection.

For over a decade, I happily stirred my way through pudding recipes from the most tried-and-true grandmotherly sources I could find: Fannie Farmer and “Joy of Cooking,” Better Homes and Gardens magazine, and spiralbound Junior League cookbooks.

And all the puddings were pretty good — jiggly and smooth, with addictive sticky skins that I greedily peeled off and ate while standing in front of the fridge. But none was quite good enough to send me back for more.

At restaurants, chocolate pudding was an entirely different creature, one that had nothing to do with Grandma. Luscious and sexy, with a haunting bittersweet flavor and a texture like a silk camisole, it was less family matron than femme fatale.

So what did these puddings have that mine didn’t, other than possibly a whole lot of heavy cream? More