Near Death Experience

Some people have only eaten Snack Pack or Jello Instant and thus have never encountered the darker side of pudding. If you ever made it from scratch (first of all, you should! It’s a totally different and ineffable pudd-tastic experience) or even from a cooked pudding mix, then you may have seen the thick rubbery layer that forms over the top of a bowl.  It lurks there, appearing to be the simplest of childhood desserts, it may even crack down the center, but don’t be led astray by this façade of weakness: a pudding skin once tried to kill me.

I couldn’t have been more than 4 years old and what 4 year old is going to turn down chocolate pudding? The little bowl had been in the fridge for a few days, the pudding skin growing thicker and meaner by the minute, like the malevolent black sludge that killed Tasha Yar on Vagra II in one of the top 10 stupidest STNG episodes. Maybe my bite was too big, maybe I was eating too fast, but whatever the catalyst, I felt the slimey thing going down and suddenly there was a big blob of pudding skin completely blocking my air way. I hacked and sputtered and almost threw up trying to breathe again.

A thing like that can scar you for life. Not that I gave up eating pudding. I’m not an extremist. I simply can’t stand pudding skin. I could not believe it when, in the late 80s they brought out an actual product for kids to snack on, like a fruit rollup, but made out of pudding. They were marketing pudding skins to innocent children! Forget the long slow death from smoking, a pudding skin can get you like that *snap!*

I'm not making this up: here's proof, and with a spy theme, that hints at the underlying danger!

Do the right thing. Put a piece of wax paper over the top while it’s cooling to stop the skin from forming. It’s only civilized.

Chocolate Pudding

Mix together in saucepan…

½ cup sugar

2 squares unsweetened chocolate, shaved

2 T cornstarch

¼ t salt

1 egg or 2 egg yolks

Stir in gradually…

2 cups milk

Cook over low heat, stirring until mixture boils. Boil 1 minute. Blend in…

1 T butter, if desired

1 ½ t vanilla

From Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, 1950.

Now let’s talk about that nasty film that forms on the top of scalded milk…