Hard Hat Pudding
Last week we took a little trip down food memory lane. We grew up in the 1970’s with a lot of prepackaged food (Swanson’s TV dinners and Kool-Aid, anyone?) and those little Pillsbury recipe booklets you would find at the checkout. As children of the 70’s, we loved so many recipes made with those little Jiffy cake mixes and frostings. We have a lot of fond memories of food from that time and have even recreated some of the recipes here on our blog, such as Rocky Road Bar Cookies and Bit O’Chocolate Bars.
While we were reminiscing, Jenn mentioned a dessert concoction that our mom used to make for us in these colorful Raffiaware mugs:
The dessert was a pudding with a hard chocolate shell on top. Although we both vividly remember this dessert, we could not for the life of us remember if mom made it from scratch. We Googled it and discovered it was a packaged dessert called Jell-O® Spoon Candy. We call it Hard Hat Pudding because, Spoon Candy? That really doesn’t describe this dessert at all. We recalled the flavors as butterscotch and peanut butter pudding but could not find any record of either. It appears the only flavors were vanilla and chocolate pudding with a hard chocolate topping.
Well, we decided we needed to make this Hard Hat Pudding as soon as possible. We think peanut butter and chocolate make the best flavor combination, so we had to make our own pudding. We slightly modified this delicious peanut butter pudding recipe and made our own chocolate hard hat. In addition, we made a batch with boxed butterscotch pudding and our own recipe for chocolate hard hat. If you want to go the easy route, you can use a box of Jell-O® pudding mix and some magic shell in a bottle from the grocery store with similar results.
Do you have any fond food memories from your childhood? We would love to hear them!
So easy and delicious!
Although we love our classic Raffiaware cups, glass bowls are nice for seeing the layers of yum!
Hard Hat Peanut Butter Pudding
Ingredients
- Pudding:
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 5 tsp cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 cups (472ml) whole milk
- 1/4 cup (59ml) heavy cream
- 1/2 cup (127g) creamy peanut butter
- 1 TBS unsalted butter
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- Topping:
- 12 oz chopped milk chocolate
- 6 TBS coconut oil or vegetable shortening
- 1 TBS cocoa powder
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- For the pudding:
- Whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a large saucepan. Add about 1/2 cup milk and whisk to combine.
- Gradually add the remaining milk and cream, whisking to combine, while cooking over medium heat. Bring the mixture to a boil, whisking constantly.
- Let the mixture boil for about 30 seconds. Then add the peanut butter.
- Continue boiling, whisking constantly, until thickened (about 1 minute).
- Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the butter and vanilla.
- Transfer the pudding to 4-6 individual serving bowls or ramekins. Cover with plastic wrap, pressing the wrap directly onto the surface of the pudding. Chill at least 2 hours before topping.
- For the topping:
- Place chocolate and coconut oil in a medium microwave safe bowl. Microwave on 50% power for 1 minute. Stir. Continue to microwave on 50% power for 30 second intervals, stirring after each, until melted and smooth. Stir in coco powder and vanilla extract.
- Pour about an 1/8" of chocolate over each pudding cup. Return to refrigerator and chill for about 30 minutes or until set.
Thank you so much for this blog & recipe! I’m also a child of the 70s and this will forever be my favorite dessert that mom made. I also absolutely remember a peanut butter version – that’s the only one I would’ve been interested in!
Thank you for sleuthing this! I also vividly remember a peanut butter one! I dream about it and here you have solved it! 🙂 xoxo!