Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Tuesdays with Dorie - Split-Level Pudding

This weeks recipe was Split-Level Pudding and it was chosen by Garrett of The Flavor of Vanilla. This looked like such a yummy recipe and I was really excited to try it.


I guess it had to happen sooner or later. I had to have a "fail" on one of these recipes. This was it. A great big Fail! I will say in my defense that I am a baker, not a pudding maker. :)

I had such high hopes for this recipe. I decided to add espresso powder to the cornstarch and salt and make my split-level chocolate and coffee. It was going to be sooo good.

The ganache gave me no trouble. I brought the cream to a boil, poured it over the chopped chocolate, waited 30 seconds, slowly stirred and Wah Lah! Perfect! Poured that into the four ramekins I had set out.

I didn't start worrying about the second half until I added the hot milk to the processor and processed it. I had a very large amount of foam. Foam? But, I gallantly went on. I cooked the foam over medium heat, waiting for it to thicken. Had to keep lowering the heat as it was getting too hot too quick but not thickening. Finally it began to get thick, but was a strange texture, thick but full of holes. Again I continued on. Put it in my food processor, added the butter and vanilla and hit the pulse a few times...and ended up with a very thin liquid in my processor. Not at all pudding like. But, I put it into the ramekins and covered it with plastic and put them in the fridge. Checked them this morning and they were just as thin and watery as they were when I put them in the fridge. So, I did the only thing I could do. I stuck them in the freezer.

So, no pudding for my house. We had frozen icy milky stuff. It tastes great! However it is nothing like what it is supposed to be. I don't know where I went wrong. Not sure what step doomed the pudding, but I did something wrong. :( Someday I will try again, but not this week. I am heading to Germany on Friday and will be missing the next two Tuesdays. In the meantime, head over to TWD and see what everyone else thought.

9 comments:

  1. ice milk-- good thinking! not sure why this happened, but looks like you weren't alone...i've seen several other TWDers say the same. enjoy your trip!

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  2. Oh no! I hope you try it out again, or at least Dorie's pastry cream. It really is delicious. Enjoy your trip to Germany- I'm jealous!

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  3. It looks really good! Have a wonderful trip. I hope to have the Chocolate baking group up and running by the time you are back.

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  4. Oh dear. It looks like ice cream. I suppose you could have put it through the ice cream maker for frozen custard.
    Have a great trip!

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  5. Hmmm that is odd.. .but that's like jello pudding pops in a cup! Bill Cosby made a lot of money off those things so they couldn't be all that bad :)
    Honestly tho I dont know what all the business is with the food processor. I skipped it, the pudding is pastry cream, and no electric equipment is required for pastry cream... unless you have an electric stove of course.
    I think you should give it another try b/c it was darn good.

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  6. So many people had the same thing happen!!! Oh well - at least it still tasted good. Enjoy your trip to Germany and "see" you when you get back.

    PS Thanks so much for the welcome to TWD! Lydia

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  7. I think the problem was the food processor. For such a simple sounding pudding, too. If we just mixed all of it together, it would have been easier and probably would have turned out better. At any rate, your pudding ice cream looks great. After all, ice cream is just custard frozen.

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  8. Pudding pops!! Works for me. Well, actually, it didn't work for me either, but was too small amount to freeze.

    have a great time in Germany. Beautiful country.

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  9. Woo Hoo have a wonderful trip to Germany. That's awesome!!!
    Custard or pudding. pudding or frozen custard either one sounds all so good to me and oh yes there is chocolate? I'm there.
    have fun
    AmyRuth

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