Instant Vanilla Pudding

After finding out how easy it was to make a homemade chocolate pudding mix, I thought it would only be right to make vanilla as well.  Now, we don’t eat vanilla pudding often, but there are a myriad of applications like adding pudding mixes to cakes, or making a very quick pastry cream, or using it as a base for other flavors.  You could use vanilla pudding to make an Eclair Cake or a Banana Cream Pie.

The one I made was super vanilla because I used my vanilla sugar for the sugar.  To make vanilla sugar, simply add a scraped vanilla bean specks and the bean to a bunch of sugar and let it sit.  I bought a bunch of beans here and found they are lasting quite a while.  Vanilla beans are quite expensive purchased at the stores, so I bought them online instead.  Or, you could find a couple friends who want to split the cost.  Ha ha, get it?  “Split”  Like split the vanilla bean… okay, never mind.

Pudding has a really interesting history.  Apparently, a man’s wife was allergic to yeast and eggs.  So, he created pudding in order for her to enjoy dessert.  Isn’t that “sweet”?

Instant Vanilla Pudding
serves 4

To Make the Mix:
3/4 cup (2.25 oz) nonfat milk powder
3/4 cup (3 oz.) cornstarch
1 cup (7 oz.) sugar or vanilla sugar
2 whole vanilla beans, split, scraped and cut into 3 pieces*
1 tsp. kosher salt

*If you absolutely do not want to buy vanilla beans, my replacement would be to add 2 tsp. of vanilla extract AFTER the pudding has been cooked on the stove and removed from the heat.  That way the vanilla flavor won’t cook out.  Stir in and cover with plastic wrap and chill for cold pudding or stir and eat for warm pudding.

1.  Mix it all up!  Store in a airtight, dry place.

To Make the Pudding:

1/2 cup mix
2 cups milk or half and half***

1.  Whisk the mix and milk in a medium saucepan.  Turn the heat to medium high.  Whisk often.
2.  Once it starts to boil, bring the stove down to medium-low or low and simmer for 4 minutes.  Whisk the entire time in order to keep the milk from burning on the bottom.
3.  Cool for 5 minutes.  Some websites had it ready at this point.  I thought it was better chilled.  So, put a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface (to keep it from forming a skin) and chill in the fridge for 4 hours.

***If you want to fill tarts or cakes with a pastry cream like filling, simply reduce the milk to 1 and 1/2 cups.  After removing the pot from the heat, add your flavor:  more vanilla, fiori di sicilia, peppermint, etc.

I made mine super duper vanilla by putting another scraped vanilla bean into the saucepan which is my photo has so many vanilla bean specks.  I told ya I have a lot of beans!

Recipe from alwaysorderdessert.com