Homemade Pudding

My mom mentioned the other day that her mom used to make cornstarch pudding so I decided to try it.  Wow!  It is great and I know exactly what is in it so I feel better about eating it.  Surprisingly, vanilla pudding does not need to be yellow - that is just the artificial coloring added to the store bought pudding.  It's amazing what we take for granted when we buy pre-made mixes.  I used a recipe from allrecipes.com however I changed it as I made it.  Here is my recipe:

Flour Girl's Pudding Recipe

2 cups milk
1/4 cup sugar
3 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/4 tsp. salt
1 /2 tsp. cinnamon (optional)
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tbsp. butter

Mix all dry ingredients in a stainless steel saucepan (including cinnamon if you want).  Add the milk and whisk until dry ingredients are dissolved.  It is very important that you dissolve cornstarch into cold liquid. If you heat the milk first, you get lumpy pudding. Heat and stir until mixture is thickened but not boiling.  To test thickness, dip a metal spoon into the pudding and if it sticks nicely and doesn't slide off, it's done.  Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla extract.  I always use real butter.  Pour into serving bowls.  Enjoy warm or chilled.

Next time I will try adding some cocoa to the dry ingredients to make chocolate pudding.  If you try adding anything dry like cocoa, make sure you add it at the beginning or it won't mix in well later.  If you make this, I'd love to hear what variations you do.

For everyone looking for a bargain, making the pudding mix from scratch costs about 20 cents (not counting the cost of the milk).

No time to blog or to do baking experiments

My house is a mess as usual so this week I am really going to tackle it and get it under control.  I think it is really an attempt to avoid my kitchen/wallpaper/painting project but if it gets my house clean, I'm OK with that. What I really want to do is try making bagels and to make cornbread using cornmeal milled from popcorn kernels but that will have to wait for now. 

Getting into a Routine

Now that the newness of making my own bread has worn off, I've gotten into a better routine.  I try to only bake once a week since it takes up several hours of the day.  I freeze all but what we will eat in 2 to 3 days and then get more out as needed.  The other adjustment I've made is to almost always just make rolls.  They don't take that much longer to make and they bake faster and more evenly than a loaf.  They also don't dry out like sliced bread and aren't crumbly. When I need more rolls out of the freezer, I can just grab a few and put them in my bag on the counter.  I can't do that with a frozen loaf of bread.  Frozen rolls or bread don't last as long as fresh so I only get out what we'll eat by the next day.

I still love the taste of fresh bread using freshly milled flour but I've really tried to limit my time spent on it now.  My kitchen is currently torn up as I'm in the middle of removing wallpaper so I can paint.  Here is our latest kitchen masterpiece - my daughter and her friend are coloring on the wall before I remove the wallpaper backing:

Cream Dried Beef on Toast

I've decided that everything tastes better with freshly milled flour - even the toast I cover with cream dried beef.  I grew up eating cream dried beef on toasted white bread and I always liked it but the white bread certainly wasn't contributing to the taste or nutrition.  When you use homemade bread, it takes it to a new level.  To make mine, I use the white sauce recipe on the corn starch box however I omit the salt due to the salt in the dried beef.  I accidentally forgot the butter today and didn't miss it so I will just add a small amount of butter next time - the recipe calls for way more than what is needed.  The beef and bread give it enough flavor already.  I use dried beef cut fresh from the deli when I can but you can buy prepackaged dried beef if you want to keep it on hand for a quick meal.  Make sure you break up the dried beef into bite sized pieces before starting your cream sauce since you need to stir the sauce constantly.  Then you can mix in the dried beef at the end.  Enjoy!