How To Make Thick And Smooth Pudding?

Make cool, silky pudding that ticks back the yesteryears, when taste buds were feasted with delicious treats eaten at the kitchen table as an after-school snack. Get ready to pack in these easy tips in your recipe box to enjoy the most favored, smooth, thick and well decorated pudding. Sometimes cooking good pudding from scratch seems like a black art, if one attempt becomes a bowl of vanilla soup the other will becomes spackle. Here are some guidelines to cook the perfect pudding

Tips
Add egg to thicken the pudding. When heated, eggs made of long chains of protein unfurl and interlock with each to thicken the liquid.

If you are making rice pudding or pearl tapioca pudding, the mixture may not thicken immediately because the starch needs time to be cooked out of the grains into the liquid. Rice releases starch into the liquid as it cooks. Therefore stir the rice to release more starch and disperses it throughout the pudding.

Gelatin is usually casted out from the pudding recipe, but it is still used for pudding-type confections as Bavarian Cream. Make sure not to use unflavored gelatin to thicken as it as most of them contain acids like citric acid.

Agar Agar, a thickener made from seaweed also helps in thickening the pudding. Search for the product only in Asian food section as it may not be available anywhere else.

If tapioca or rice pudding is looking too thin, mix a bit of corn starch and water and toss it in. Next time, use more tapioca or add an egg to the recipe.

Cadbury's nutties or gems, gluced cherries, whipped cream, crumbled biscuits, dry fruits used inside, coloured sugar ...etc, make excellent decorations for party puddings.

While chilling the puddings, place a sheet of plastic wrap on the surface. This will prevent a skin from forming on the top as it cools.

Sprinkle fruit-flavored gelatin powder (like Jello) over the top of the usual vanilla pudding to give the pudding additional flavor and an "edible" appeal!

For creamy chocolate pudding use cocoa powder as it is much lower in fat than the baker's chocolate.

While greasing the basin, for steamed pudding, grease it with melted butter and refrigerate for 5 minutes, then re-grease again. This will form a 'crust' on the bowl that will prevent the pudding from sticking and thus helps in easy removal. To make sure there is still sufficient water surrounding it check your pudding every 30 minutes. You can also check the water level by placing a coin in the base of your saucepan. While the water is simmering away the coin will rattle, if the rattling sound stops you will know to check the water level.

Follow these tips to make the homemade pudding an easy treat.