in 20 minutes

Howdy everyone,
Chicaoji Chocolate Pudding?! Sounds crazy right? Well, I’m here to tell you it’s worth a try.

Back story: How Chicaoji Chocolate Pudding came to be…

We’ve been making Chicaoji chocolate milk for quite a while but one day we felt like having something more treat-y. Chocolate Pudding is pretty treat-y… so we started playing around with a basic pudding recipe. We enlisted several Lopez Islanders, including a couple of kids, to help try out the various variations.

We came up with the recipe below. It takes about 20 minutes from start to finish. We generally eat some of it hot and refrigerate the rest for later.

Chicaoji Chocolate Pudding recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups milk (or almond, coconut, oat milk, etc)
• 4-6 Tablespoons cacao powder (I use 6)
• 3 Tablespoons cornstarch
• ¼ Cup maple syrup
• 1 Tablespoon Chicaoji Sauce (or more if you want)
• ½ Teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ Teaspoon cinnamon powder (optional)
• Pinch of salt

Method:

1. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly in double boiler (metal bowl in a pot with water in it. )
2. Add a bit of milk and stir/whisk to make a paste. (The dry stuff clumps up if doesn’t get evenly moistened in the beginning.)
3. Slowly add remaining milk and stir frequently as the mixture slowly heats up. This helps avoid clumps too.
4. Add the Chicaoji, maple syrup and vanilla extract at some point. (There seems to be some disagreement as to whether it makes a difference WHEN the Chicaoji goes in. We seek your opinion on this matter.)
5. Continue stirring until the pudding thickens. It bubbles a bit if you stop stirring.
6. Eat: Pour into cups or ramekins or whatever you want to eat it out of. (Or just eat it out of the bowl!)

Eat hot right away or refrigerate and eat later.
It’s yummy either way.

Much thanks to the tasting crew for guiding us to this point.
We like this and thought you might like it too.

I’d really love to hear your feedback on this idea. Would you add more/less cacao? Would you add more/less Chicaoji? Any suggestions for improvement?