Split Level Pudding

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie was selected by Garrett of Flavor of Vanilla. Garrett picked Split Level Pudding, which is vanilla pudding with a hidden layer of chocolate ganache. Check out Flavor of Vanilla for the complete recipe. Man, I have made chocolate ganache about 4 times in the last week, so I am quite the expert! I’m a little tired of making it so I hope that my recipes will be ganache-free for the next few weeks.

Since joining Tuesdays with Dorie, I have become quite adept at making puddings and custards. Dorie is very diligent in her process of making the pudding, which is ok. She has you make the pudding in a saucepan, but uses a food processor to keep everything nice a smooth. I did use the food processor at the beginning of the process, but not at the end after the pudding had thickened. I didn’t want to pulverize it after it had gotten nice and thick! It still looked perfectly smooth, so I figured it would be ok.

I wanted to show off the two layers of the pudding, so I put some of the pudding in fluted wine glasses. It was hard to get the ganache in the bottom of the glass but it was worth the effort because they look great! It would definitely be a nice presentation for when company was over. I think that the ganache gets too hard to really work with the pudding. It takes a little effort to get a bit of the chocolate with the vanilla pudding when you take a spoonful. The chocolate is the strong flavor here and I like vanilla pudding, so I miss the pronounced vanilla flavor. Pretty good overall, but not the best dessert ever.

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 384- 385.