TUESDAYS WITH DORIE (In spirit, on Sunday) - Chocolate Pudding

If you want to taste something yummy beyond belief, then go get out your Baking: From My Home to Yours cookbook by Dorie Greenspan (you do have this cookbook, don't you? If you don't, scroll about one-fourth of the way down on this page to the Amazon.com product search box, which is right below the Books We Love widget, and order that thing) and make the chocolate pudding recipe on page 383. It is deeeeeeee-licious!

I have never been much of a fan of instant pudding. It just doesn't taste good to me. But making pudding over the stove is such a bother. The pudding does taste better, yes, but all the stirringstirringstirring is dull. The nice thing about Dorie's pudding is that it doesn't require massive amounts of stirring because you'll be using the food processor to do most of that for you.

The other great thing about this pudding -- well, other than the taste -- is that you'll use the food processor and one medium-sized saucepan, plus your ramekins. There are a few assorted utensils such as a whisk and a spatula, but the clean up was surprisingly easy. Most of what you do involves moving ingredients from the processor to the saucepan and then back again.

Meelyn, Aisling and I put this delicious, comfort-food dessert together in about fifteen to twenty minutes, and I feel that most of that time was spent looking over the instructions so that I wouldn't leave something out or add ketchup or another wrong ingredient and mess it all up. It was foolproof, and I know a little something about that.

The pudding calls for both unsweetened cocoa powder and bittersweet chocolate (accompanied by plenty of sugar), which gave it a finished, grown-up kind of taste that made me think that this was not my pre-school niece's pudding cup I was eating: this was rich, dark and creamy chocolate to swoon over. The texture was smooth and also firm and thick; it didn't instantly dissolve into a little bit of nothing in the mouth, but stayed there long enough for a chocolate lover to savor the goodness.

Dorie suggested pouring the pudding into six ramekins. I was so delighted that I only have four.

I highly recommend making this really wonderful pudding. It's uncomplicated enough for a family dessert, yet sophisticated enough to serve adult guests after a dinner of some down-home fare.