Homemade Chocolate Pudding Mix

Putting a special homemade mix-in-a-jar in the pantry of someone special as a holiday gift is one of my favorite things…favorite things to receive that is. Mixes are nice because you get to delay your gratification for a little while until the doldrums of the winter when cookies and cakes and pastry are not available in holiday-level copious quantities. The most common DIY mixes are soups, hot cocoas and cookies. Which is why my antennas twitched with glee when I found a newspaper clipping with a DIY chocolate pudding mix recipe nestled in the pages of a vintage cookbook.

Good old fashioned cooked chocolate pudding, a vintage treat for sure. As luck would have it, the author is someone who has been described as “one of the cornerstones of authentic cooking in New York.” This is not your average chocolate pudding recipe. It’s got pedigree.

Cecily Brownstone was the Food Editor at the Associated Press from 1947-1986, churning out five recipe columns and two food features every week that were carried in papers across the country. This recipe comes from one of those recipe columns, one where she answered reader requests.

The letter writer, Quick Book, wanted a copycat of the boxed chocolate pudding mixes (the kind you cook, not mix with milk and stir). And she wanted it to be dark chocolate, with cocoa. Ms. Brownstone gave her that, and aptly pointed out that unlike the store mixes, the homemade mix was free of preservatives, artificial coloring or artificial flavoring.

Cecily Brownstone’s Copycat Chocolate Pudding Mix Recipe

4 cups nonfat dry milk powder

3 1/2 cups sugar

1 2/3 cups corn starch

2 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa

Stir together the dry milk, sugar, corn starch and cocoa until well mixed. Store in a tightly covered container at room temperature. Makes about 9 cups of mix. Stir mix before each use.

Copycat Chocolate Pudding

1 cup Copycat Chocolate Pudding Mix

2 cups regular milk

2 tablespoons butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

In a 2 quart saucepan gradually stir the milk into the Pudding Mix, keeping smooth. Over medium heat, stirring constantly, bring to a boil and boil 1 minute. Off heat, stir in butter and vanilla until butter is melted. Pour into individual serving dishes. Cover; refrigerate. Makes 4 (each 1/2 cup) servings.

To turn Ms. Brownstone’s recipe into gifts, parcel it out in 1 cup increments. Since each cup makes 4 servings, 2 cups seems like a reasonable amount of mix. Add the instructions to make the pudding, and, if you are really good, add some vintage custard cups.