Chocolate pudding that does not taste like the packet

The set comes from cornstarch, not from gelatin and not from a box. The cocoa has to be whisked into cold milk first. Cocoa dumped onto hot milk clumps, and those lumps do not whisk out later.

28 g of cornstarch is 1/4 cup. Cornstarch is lighter than people expect from the way it packs. The cornstarch chart is the weight. If the box is empty, the cornstarch substitute is usually flour at about twice the weight. Flour pudding needs the same one-minute boil, or it tastes like paste. 25 g of cocoa powder is about 5 level tablespoons. Cocoa is 85 g per cup, so a heaped spoon is not a tablespoon. The cocoa powder chart settles it.

Slurry cold, then boil on purpose

Mix the cornstarch, cocoa, sugar, and salt with only 100 g of the milk. A slurry that is too thick is hard to whisk smooth. A slurry poured into a boiling pot without whisking becomes dumplings.

Once it bubbles, stay there for a minute. Thickening is not the same as done. The starch granules need that short boil. Stop when the minute is up. A long hard boil drives off too much water and the pudding turns rubbery as it cools.

50 g of sugar is 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. The granulated sugar chart is the conversion. Butter and vanilla go in off the heat. Butter melted in earlier just floats as oil. Vanilla boiled away tastes like nothing.

Skin is optional

A skin forms when the surface dries. Press wrap directly onto the pudding if you want it glossy. Leave it open if you like the skin. Both are the same pudding underneath.

It keeps 3 days in the fridge. It weeps a little clear liquid after day two. Stir that back in. Do not boil it again to re-thicken it. A second boil makes it gluey.