Tuesdays with Dorie: Butterscotch Pudding

Donna of Spatulas, Corkscrews & Suitcases chose this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe: real butterscotch pudding. This is an old-fashioned pudding that you cook on the stovetop and contains butter and real scotch. I don’t really drink so I was happy that my local liquor store sold little tiny bottles of scotch. I certainly wasn’t going to buy a big bottle of scotch for a recipe that used only 2 tablespoons!

This was an interesting recipe, in that you use a saucepan and also a food processor to make the pudding. I understand that this is how other puddings from Dorie’s book are also made, but this is the first pudding I’ve made since joining Tuesdays with Dorie. I have a food processor, so I didn’t think that it would be too much trouble.

You start off by heating up milk and cream in the saucepan, while whirling some other ingredients in the food processor. I was a little short of cornstarch, but I hoped that I was close enough to make it work. After the milk mixture came to a boil, you were supposed to pour the hot liquid mixture into the food processor. Well, I tried that and as I started pouring I knew that the mixture would go all over the counter rather than into the food processor, so I decided to scrap the idea of using the food processor. I got out a whisk and just used that instead of the food processor.

The pudding turned out perfectly smooth and I think that it was just fine without using the food processor. The pudding is really good and you can definitely taste the scotch! It was quite boozy the first day but that seemed to dissipate over the next couple of days. It’s not the rich yellow color that you expect from a butterscotch candy, but that’s just food coloring anyway. It’s not very exciting to look at (and doesn’t photograph very well) but it is really tasty. It’s quite a bit of work for pudding, but this one was definitely a success.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 386