Small luxuries for the kitchen, the perfect gifts for friends and family who love to cook.
It’s my favorite time of year again, gift guide season! There’s nothing I love better than reading through prettily arranged lists of items recommended by my favorite bloggers, trying to match presents to people on my list and secretly just making an extra long list for myself. And as is tradition around here, I’m back this year with another incredibly specific gift guide of my own. (I know, I’m excited about it too!! 😉 ) Last year, it was Nerdy Mugs , and this year, it’s Small Luxuries for the Kitchen.
What are small luxuries? They are the little items that might never quite make their way into someone’s budget, but that would make their time in the kitchen just a little easier or more enjoyable. Every single item on this list falls into the category of I didn’t think I needed this, but now I don’t know how I ever lived without it . And I think that’s the very best category to gift from.
Cookie Scoops // Because perfectly even, perfectly shaped cookies are a luxury everyone deserves.
Butter Warmer // What’s the point of a tiny, tiny pot? To make hot chocolate of course, and lattes and cheese sauce and everything else good in this world.
Cookbook/iPad Stand // Keep your cookbooks and tablets safe from spills and easily accessible.
Silicon Baking Mats // Be kind to the planet (no more parchment paper!) and never burn the bottoms of your cookies again.
Immersion Blender // You don’t think you need an immersion blender until own one, and then you won’t know how you ever got by without it.
Spoon Rest // Put my cooking spoon on a plate? What am I, a peasant? Give me a dedicated spoon rest or nothing.
Kitchen Speaker // Phone speakers are good, but a Bluetooth kitchen speaker is better. Jam out or play your favorite podcasts while you make something delicious.
What’s on your Christmas list this year?
This Chocolate Pudding for Two is absolutely indulgent and decadent and one of the easiest things in the world to make.
Good morning! How are you on this fine Friday? Feeling a little harried from the holidays? Run down by the work week? If that’s the case, I have a little weekend pick-me-up for you today: the best, easiest, most amazing Chocolate Pudding for Two.
And if you’re sitting there, nose crinkled, remembering bland pudding eaten in school cafeterias out of little plastic cups, thinking you outgrew chocolate pudding years ago, friend, I have great news for you. You’re never too old for good chocolate pudding (and this is Good Chocolate Pudding TM).
Chocolate pudding is the perfect grown-up dessert because it feels absolutely indulgent and decadent, but it’s low-stress to make, and the active cooking time is short. So you can throw together a fabulous pudding dessert quickly and get right back to whatever important grownup things you were doing like, I don’t know, chopping down trees or taxes.
I love this particular pudding recipe so much that it has actually appeared on the site twice before. Once as filling in my Brooklyn Blackout Cupcakes (if you like chocolate, you must go try those) and this summer as the base of my Homemade Pudding Pops , but today it’s time to let the pudding be pudding.
And letting this pudding be the star of the show is never a bad thing. Deeply chocolatey and creamy, rich, and not too sweet, it’s a dessert to linger over. Just add good company, and you have the makings of a perfect evening.
How to Make Chocolate Pudding
Chocolate pudding really is one of the easiest desserts in existence. If you can hold a whisk, you can make this pudding. You just take said whisk and mix together sugar, cornstarch, salt, and milk over low heat until thickened, melt in some semisweet chocolate, drizzle in a few drops of vanilla, and refrigerate until set. About twelve minutes of active cooking time and two to three hours of agonizing waiting for your pudding to set, and you can grab a spoon, pile on the whipped cream, and enjoy.
Chocolate Pudding for Two Recipe Notes
- This pudding can be made with any percentage milk, but the higher-fat the milk, the richer (and tastier) the pudding will be. If you only have low-fat milk, you can replace a bit of it with heavy cream or half and half for a richer finished product.
- With homemade puddings, it’s completely normal to have some cornstarch lumps. You can strain them out with a fine-mesh strainer (if you don’t own one, they’re cheap on Amazon and also available in the baking aisle at most large grocery stores) or just leave them. They won’t hurt anything.
- To make chocolate shavings for topping, run a vegetable peeler down the short edge of a chocolate bar.
Looking for more chocolate desserts for two? Try these Chocolate Souffles for Two , Peanut Butter Brownies for Two , and Small-batch Chocolate Cupcakes .
Ingredients
Special Equipment
- ▢ Fine-mesh strainer
Chocolate Pudding for Two
- ▢ 1/4 cup ( 50g ) granulated sugar
- ▢ 2 tablespoons ( 15g ) cornstarch
- ▢ 1/8 teaspoon salt
- ▢ 1 1/2 cups milk whole preferred, but any percentage is fine
- ▢ 1/2 cup ( 3oz ) semisweet chocolate chopped (good-quality chocolate chips are fine)
- ▢ 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Toppings
- ▢ Whipped Cream optional
- ▢ Chocolate shavings optional
Instructions
- In a 2-quart (small) saucepan, whisk together sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Slowly whisk in milk, whisking out any lumps as they form.
- Heat over medium-low heat, whisking every other minute or so, until mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, 8 to 12 minutes. If the mixture begins to simmer before thickened, turn down the heat slightly.
- Add chocolate and whisk until completely incorporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in vanilla.
- Strain pudding through a fine mesh strainer to remove any lumps. Pour into individual serving cups or single container and allow to cool at room temperature for at least 15 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap–if you are worried about pudding skin, place wrap directly on pudding surface–and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours, until set.
- Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings if desired and enjoy!
Notes
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Twelve days of Small-batch Christmas cookies and Christmas movie recommendations.
Hey, did you know that as of today, Wednesday the 13th of December, there are only 12 days until Christmas? One, where did the first half of December go, wasn’t it Thanksgiving like yesterday? And Two, that means you have just 12 days left to savor all the Christmas joy you can wring out of this cold dark world before you have to pack it away for another year. Time to double your effort.
Aside from the obvious things, friends, family, sharing, caring, PRESENTS, etc., my favorite things this time of year are Christmas cookies and Christmas movies, so today I’m sharing a round-up of both. Small-batch Christmas Cookies, so you can bake to your heart’s content this month without sweet-ing yourself out ahead of all the holiday parties and the very best Christmas movies to fill these long December evenings. If you make one recipe and watch one movie a day starting today, this list will take you all the way up through Christmas Eve, and it will be a delicious, delightful ride.
Day 1: Let’s start out this cookie journey with a couple of classics, Small Batch of Cut-out Sugar Cookies and Miracle on 34th Street.
Day 2: Load these Small-batch M&M Cookies with Christmas M&M’s and put on The Muppet Christmas Carol , the best and truest Christmas Carol adaptation of all the Christmas Carol adaptations (currently available on HBO).
Day 3: It doesn’t get much better than some Chai White Hot Chocolate , a couple Small-batch Peanut Butter Cookies , and the 2005 Doctor Who Christmas special (the first outing with Ten!).
Day 4: Have yourself a White Christmas with these Small-batch Snowball Cookies with Kisses .
Day 5: Time for some warm and gooey Small-batch Chocolate Chip Cookies to go with the warm and gooey Last Holiday .
Day 6: Can’t go wrong with Small-batch Chocolate Cookies With Oreos and Andes and the perfect Christmas romcom, While You Were Sleeping .
Day 7: Give these Small-batch Chocolate Mini M&M Cookies and Iron Man 3 a try, because if Die Hard counts as a Christmas movie because it takes place during Christmas, so does Iron Man 3 .
Day 8: Speaking of Die Hard , now seems like a perfect time to watch it with some Small-batch Giant Christmas Cookies .
Day 9: The time has come for Small-batch Shortbread Cookies and The Grinch (the good one) .
Day 10: Let the Rankin/Bass Christmas Specials keep you company while you wrap some last-minute presents and nibble on Small-batch Gingerbread Cookies .
Day 11: Make Christmas Eve Eve extra extra with these crazy rich Small-batch Buckeye Brownie Cookies , some Rich and Thick Hot Chocolate , and Elf .
Day 12: And finally, Christmas Eve calls for Hot Chocolate , Miniature Hot Chocolate Cookies , and a trip aboard (my perennial fav) The Polar Express .
Bonus Recs: Readers also highly recommended The Family Stone , the ’51 version of A Christmas Carol , and Krampus . And if you need full-size Christmas cookie recipes you HAVE to make these Chai Sugar Cookies with Eggnog Glaze and Snickerdoodle Sandwich Cookies With Eggnog Buttercream .
What is your favorite Christmas cookie/movie pairing?
