Home-made Vanilla Pudding: Perfect for Eclairs

Today is National Vanilla Pudding Day, and I just had to post this Retro Ad for Jell-O Pudding Eclairs. The recipe on the Ad uses Jell-O Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling, but scroll down for a recipe for easy and delicious Home-made Vanilla Pudding that you can use in Eclairs or chocolate cups.

HOME-MADE EASY VANILLA PUDDING

Adapted from Chow.com

Ingredients

1/3 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/4 cups whole milk

3 large egg yolks, lightly beaten

3 tablespoons sweet butter, cut into small pieces

2 teaspoons Madagascar vanilla extract

Directions

Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in  medium saucepan and whisk together. While continuing to whisk, slowly add in 1/4 cup of milk until smooth. Whisk in egg yolks and rest of milk.

Place saucepan over medium heat and cook, whisking often, until pudding begins to thicken and just starts to bubble, about 6 minutes. Reduce heat to medium low and switch to rubber spatula. Stir constantly, scraping  bottom and sides of pan, until pudding makes ribbons when drizzled over surface, about 5 minutes. 

Remove from heat and stir in butter and vanilla until butter is melted and completely incorporated.

Transfer pudding to container or individual cups (depends what you plan to do with the pudding). Carefully press piece of plastic wrap on top of pudding to prevent skin from forming.
Chill in refrigerator until set, about 2 hours.

Use in recipe above ... replace packaged vanilla pudding!

How to Remove Chocolate Stains, Part I

I cook and bake with chocolate, and I eat a lot of chocolate. Needless to say, I am not always stain-free, nor is my house. Chocolate seems to make its way into every room in my household.

So last night after a literary salon in my home, I found chocolate embedded in my couch. Before I started to scrub and spread the chocolate more, I went to an old post here on DyingforChocolate.com from 2011 on How to Remove Chocolate Stains. My own advice worked like a charm. So I thought I would repost How to Remove Chocolate Stains, Part I. This is one of two posts. Love to hear from you on your own chocolate removal techniques.

Today I'm covering Fabrics. First rule of thumb is to remove any stains immediately. However, you might have overlooked that blob of chocolate from the Chocolate Tasting or Chocolate Fountain. Always check the guidelines on the item of clothing or article. No directions? Try the following. Here's another helpful hint. If you can, try removing the stain from the opposite side of the fabric. This is not always available or practical, but thought I should mention it.

PART I: FABRICS

Washable fabrics: Cotton, Linen, Acrylic fabric, nylon, polyester, spandex

Luckily, many fabrics are washable, but you still need to take a few precautionary steps.
First, wipe off as much as possible without applying a lot of pressure. BLOT.
Rinse the stain with Club Soda. (this should be a staple in your pantry for lots of different stains)
At this point if the spot looks like it's gone, and the article can go in the washer, put a little Simple Green on the spot and throw it in and wash on cold. I don't dry anything in the dryer, until I'm sure it's out.

However, HowStuffWorks.com adds a few steps. If the article is important to you, I suggest adding these steps and not throwing the article into the washer.
Sponge the spot with a spot lifter.
Apply a dry spotter to the stain and cover with an absorbent pad dampened with the dry spotter.
Keep the stain moist with dry spotter.
Let it stand as long as any stain is being lifted.
Change the pad as it picks up the stain.
Flush with a dry-cleaning solvent.

If any stain remains:
Apply a few drops of dish washing detergent and a few drops of ammonia to the stain, then tamp or scrape.
Keep the stain moist with the detergent and ammonia and blot occasionally with an absorbent pad.
Flush well with water to remove all traces of ammonia.
Allow to dry or launder as usual.

Non Washable Fabrics: Acetate, Burlap, Rayon, Rope, Silk, Wool

I wear silk shirts all the time, so chocolate invariably finds its way onto these shirts. The shirts are washable. Who knew? Since I have over 25 of them in all colors, this was a wonderful discovery. What I do is blot and then use use a little dishwasher soap (very little), and rinse. I throw the shirt in the washer on cold for a short cycle, but don't dry them in the dryer until I check the spot.

HowStuffWorks.com has a more methodical way of removing chocolate stains from non-washable fabrics:
Blot up any excess, or scrape (the method of using a scraping tool to gently lift off excess solid or caked-on stains) any matter from the surface.
Flush (the method of applying stain remover to loosen staining materials and residue from stain removers) the stain with club soda to prevent setting.
Sponge (the method of using light strokes with a dampened pad working outward from the center of the stain) the stain with a spot lifter or cleaning fluid.
Then apply a dry spotter to the stain and cover with an absorbent pad dampened with the dry spotter.
Keep the stain and pad moist with the dry spotter. Let it stand as long as any stain is being removed.
Change the pad as it picks up the stain.
Flush with dry-cleaning solvent.

If a stain remains:
Moisten with an enzyme pre-soak (follow directions on label).
Cover with a clean pad that has been dipped in the solution and wrung almost dry.
Let stand at least 30 minutes.
Add more solution if needed to keep the stain warm and moist, but do not allow the wet area to spread.
When the stain is lifted, flush thoroughly with water and allow to dry.

And more from HowStuffWorks.com:

Felt and Fur: 
Different procedure to remove chocolate from the cat or dog. Since chocolate is dangerous to animals, you shouldn't allow chocolate near them anyway!

Gently scrape to remove excess.
Mix a mild soap in hot water and swish to make a great volume of suds.
Dip a cloth in the foam and apply to the fabric.
Rinse by wiping with a clean cloth dampened with clear water.

If a grease stain remains:
Powder the stain with an absorbent such as corn meal.
Give it plenty of time to work.
Gently brush (the method of using a stiff-bristled brush to gently remove dried stains and spots) it out.
Take care not to force the absorbent further into the hairs. Repeat if necessary.

Leather and Suede: 
This is very similar to felt and fur, except for the final step with leather.

Gently scrape excess from the surface.
Mix a solution of mild soap in lukewarm water.
Swish to create a great volume of suds.
Apply only the foam with a sponge.
Wipe dry with a clean cloth.

If a stain remains:
Powder it with an absorbent such as corn meal.
Give it plenty of time to work.
Gently brush it off.
Repeat if necessary
On leather only, follow with a leather cleaner or saddle soap to condition the leather.

How to Remove Chocolate from other surfaces to come in another post.

Cartoon of the Day: Gluten-Free

Devil's Food Cake vs Chocolate Cake

Since it's National Devil's Food Cake Day, I thought I might revisit a post about the difference between Devil's Food Cake and Chocolate Cake. There are many different interpretations. Some recipes use cocoa, some melted chocolate, some add coffee or hot liquid, and some increase the baking soda.

According to Wikipedia:

Because of differing recipes and changing ingredient availability over the course of the twentieth century, it is difficult to precisely qualify what distinguishes Devil's food from the more standard chocolate cake. The traditional Devil's food cake is made with shredded beets much the way a carrot cake is made with carrots. The beets add moisture and sweetness to the cake, helping it to be very rich. The red of the beets slightly colors the cake red and due to the richness of the cake it became known as the Devil's food. 

O.K. That's a beet cake or a 'natural' red velvet cake, and I make a good one, but it's not a Devil's Food Cake in my opinion.


Devil's food cake is generally more moist and airy than other chocolate cakes, and often uses cocoa as opposed to chocolate for the flavor as well as coffee. The lack of melted chocolate and the addition of coffee is typically what distinguishes a Devil's food cake from a chocolate cake, though some recipes call for all, resulting in an even richer chocolate flavor. The use of hot, or boiling water as the cake's main liquid, rather than milk, is also a common difference. 

Devil's food cake is sometimes distinguished from other chocolate cakes by the use of additional baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) which raises the pH level and makes the cake a deeper and darker mahogany color. Devil's food cake incorporates butter (or a substitute), egg whites, flour (while some chocolate cakes are flourless) and less egg than other chocolate cakes. Devil's food cake was introduced in the United States in the early 20th century with the recipe in print as early as 1905. 

A similar cake, the red velvet cake, is closely linked to a Devil's food cake, and in some turn of the century cookbooks the two names may have been interchangeable. Most red velvet cakes today use red food coloring, but even without it, the reaction of acidic vinegar and buttermilk tends to better reveal the red anthocyanin in the cocoa. When used in cakes, acid causes reddening of cocoa powder when baked, and before more alkaline "Dutch Processed" cocoa was widely available, the red color would have been more pronounced. This natural tinting may have been the source for the name "Red Velvet" as well as "Devil's Food" and a long list of similar names for chocolate cakes.

I'm partial to Devil's Food Cake.

Here are several mid-century recipes. Sorry about the light print on the first cookbook.

I've posted many Devil's Food Cake recipes in the past, but today I am posting four mid-century recipes. The first recipe is for Cocoa Devil's Food Cake from How To Get the Most Out of Your Sunbeam Mixmaster (1950). I posted a "Mix-Easy" Devil's Food Cake for Mother's Day last year, and you might want to look at that one, too. It's pretty much the same as the following recipe. This is a good page for this post since there's a Chocolate Cake recipe next to the Devil's Food Cake recipe.

This same cookbook has a recipe for Black Devil's Food Cake, so now we have Cocoa Devil's Food Cake, Black Devil's Food Cake, and below a Red Devil's Food Cake. As you see, the following Black Devil's Food Cake is made with cocoa and with the addition of strong hot coffee or boiling water.

The Red Devil's Food Cake is a variation on the Chocolate Fudge Cake on the same page, and to save space, they didn't reprint the entire recipe! It's a very small pamphlet. The baking soda is increased, but otherwise it's the same cake.

This recipe is from the Recipes for your Hamilton Beach Mixer-17 Delicious New Cakes (1947). Don't you just love that someone wrote "good" next to the recipe? It's the same recipe I posted (but from a different pamphlet) on Devil's Food Cake Day for Mother's Day. 

And one more Red Devil's Food Cake from the same mid-century period. This one is from Kate Smith Chooses her 55 Favorite Ann Pillsbury CAKE RECIPES.

Enough Devil's Food Cake recipes? Never! Have a look at Martha Washington's Devil's Food Cake which is from Capitol Hill Cooks: Recipes from the White House by Linda Bauer. This is a great Buttermilk Devil's Food Cake!

So what's the difference between Devil's Food Cake and Chocolate Cake? You decide.