SMS: Chocolate Pudding and Chocolate Pudding Popsicles

It's Sunday!  And it's time for a delicious edition of Sweet Melissa Sundays.  Leslie of Lethally Delicious is our gracious host this week and she chose Sweet Melissa's Chocolate Pudding as our recipe.  I've never made chocolate pudding from scratch before so I was excited to try this one!


I prepared the recipe just as it was written in the Sweet Melissa Baking Book, but added a little frosty twist to half of the pudding.  I used Wilbur's Semisweet Chocolate.  This chocolate is absolutely delicious and conveniently - it comes in a 2.25 ounce bar - which is exactly the amount we needed for this recipe (even though I was kind of hoping there would be some extra for me to nibble on while preparing the recipe...)

With half of my pudding, I followed the directly exactly and produced some delicious, super rich chocolate pudding.  With some extra heavy cream I whipped up some homemade whipped cream and we had a perfect dessert

 

With the other half of my pudding, I decided to change it up a little bit.  Instead of refrigerating after cooling in the waterbath, I whisked the pudding until smooth, put it in a ziplock bag, snipped off a corner and piped the liquidy pudding into a Popsicle Mold.  

I used this Frozen Treat tray I got from CSN Stores. What a handy dandy little tray!  


I froze them overnight and ran a little warm water over the tray to loosen them up and voila...

The creamiest chocolate pudding pops you can imagine... yum.  


Thanks for hosting and picking this great recipe Leslie!  I loved experimenting.  Click to visit Leslie's blog and find the full recipe for Sweet Melissa's chocolate pudding.  And don't forget to visit the SMS site and see how it went for the other SMS-ers who participated this week.  

CSN Product Reviews: Tartlet Pans, Tart Pan, and Decorating Pen

Shortly after I received my shipment from CSN Stores, I got to work!  I put my new items to use to test them out and see how they faired in my kitchen.  

Sweet Melissa Sundays: Butterscotch Pudding

There are many things I have learned to make from scratch since starting this blog. I began as a novice baker, and now, I've baked all kinds of cakes, cookies, brownies, blondies, frostings, fillings, ice creams, truffles, and more. One thing, however, I had not tried until yesterday, was pudding. The instant kind is so easy, I just never saw the need to make my own. But when it came up in Sweet Melissa Sundays and I saw how simple the recipe looked, I decided to give it a try.

The one thing that made me nervous was boiling the granulated sugar and water down to an amber colored syrup. I have tried in the past and wound up with clumpy, burnt, sticky messes far too many times. This time, though, everything went smoothly. I watched it like a hawk and stirred it constantly (even though the recipe didn't say to... but I was afraid of it sticking!). When it started to turn the color of clover honey, I immediately took it off the heat and it was fine.



I made the recipe according to the book with two minor changes. One, I used fine sea salt instead of table salt (much yummier). Second, I used all half-and-half instead of heavy cream and milk.

Judging by Daniel's reaction, I'd say my first pudding-making was a success! It is very sweet, but very good. Perfectly smooth consistency and mild butterscotchy-caramelly flavor.



Don't forget to see how it came out for the other SMS bakers! And make sure to visit Jennifer's blog, Maple N' Cornbread, to see the recipe for Melissa's Butterscotch Pudding.



PS - Just wanted to let you all know we have a Valentine's apron on TheSmartBaker.com. We have added a cute little heart detail to the pocket of the monogrammed aprons! Go check it out!