TWD: Chocoliciously Fab Irish Cream Pudding.

This week's TWD was Chocolate Pudding and it was chosen by Melissa of It's Melissa's Kitchen. Can I just say how excited I was to not be doing anything fruit related?!?!?! I love fruit of course, but I have been eating a ton of it anyway (and we all remember the blueberry pobbler mistake from last week...!), so back to good old-fashioned endorphin-inducing chocolate was right up my alley.

This recipe calls for blending in the food processor and lots of trips back and forth to the stove. Since me and lots of steps involved don't really work out (I am really clumsy!) AND I don't even have a real food processor, I was happy to read in this article that Dorie says the FP is mostly for getting a super smooth texture and you can hand mix or stand mix or whatever you want this pudding and have it come out fine as well. Perfect.



I made a few changes. I love chocolate, but chocolate with liquer is even better. So, I made an Irish Cream Chocolate Pudding which I topped with hand-crushed coffee bean whipped cream and fresh chocolate shavings. The recipe made 6 portions which actually ended up being four nice large ones, because we had dinner with friends...and 2 little tiny ones in espresso cups to enjoy the next day.



I have never made pudding from scratch before...I know...unbelievable! And I was pleased at how easy it was. I mixed entirely by hand, didn't even use a mixer at all. I was very cautious about the sifting of the dry ingredients and the pouring of the milk...because I was doing it by hand. It came out perfect!! I chilled for only 2.5 hours and they were set.



For the topping, I hand-crushed coffee beans (my trainer is becoming so impressed with my biceps!), then folded them into fresh whipped cream to replicate a dessert whipped cream we had the other day...it was absolutely *amazing* with the rich chocolate. I was undone.





Quick note to list my mods for anyone intrigued. I used a combination of milk truffled chocolate AND dark bittersweet chocolate; about a 2 to 1 ratio of dark to milk truffle. I also used more chocolate than the recipe called for, about another 1.5 ounces of chocolate...can't go wrong right?! A combo of Vitamin D and 2% milk, 1c of each. The pudding was VERY rich that way, you could probably even use all 2%. Another tablespoon of sugar. Lastly, I added a nice, healthy dollop of Baileys Irish Cream liquer. YUM!



Funny...because our 2 dinner pals and one of my friends who sampled the espresso cup mini with me the next day all said 'I don't like puddings at all...but this is AMAZING'...and IT WAS. There were no leftovers. And after the funny pobbler last week, I was happy to have this pudding turn out to be absolutely fabulous (if I do say so myself!!).



Thanks for an amazingly chocolicious pick this week Melissa...and for unknowingly catering to my fruited-out tastebuds. Next week it's back to the fresh with a cobbler...but that's okay because I got my chocolate fix from this fabulously silky pudding. Check out the rest of the wonderful TWD community's pudding awesomeness here.