The Pudding Disaster

Not much going on this weekend. I did a bit more scrapbooking Saturday morning and then went and hung out with Andrea and a sick little Emily who slept for the better portion of the time I was there. The animals were their silly selves, although I've noticed they are definitely allowing each other to hang out more with fewer attacks - this being during the middle and end of the day though, mornings anything is fair game.


Sunday morning I went to church and then headed out for a little grocery shopping, as well as to get ingredients for the dessert I was taking to Thanksgiving dinner at church that night and Thanksgiving lunch at work on Tuesday. I originally was going to make this recipe I found in a magazine but once I reread the recipe I realized you had to make the filling for the cookie sandwiches 2 hours beforehand, which was clearly not going to be happening on Tuesday so I searched the trusty Food Network site for something else. I found a simple enough little recipe for this gingerbread and pumpkin pudding layered dessert so I decided to give it a try.

I mixed up the gingerbread and put it in the oven with little incident, and moved onto the pudding because it was the cook and serve kind so it needed to cool in the fridge before we headed to church at 6:00. Since I was making this for 2 events I figured I would just double the recipe right away and save myself some time Monday night - therefore I had bought two packages of pudding. As I was dumping them in the pot I was reading the back to figure out how much milk I needed and noticed that it said I just mixed the milk in - no heat or anything. This shouldn't be the case, especially since I was looking at the front of the other pack and it said cook and serve in big letters across it. While I'm turning the box over trying to figure out if those were directions for some other recipe, I emptied the second package of pudding mix into the pot at which point I noticed they were two different colors. Now I thought I had two different flavors which would not be good since I had just dumped them in the same pot, so I flipped both the boxes over to the front and realized one was cook and serve and the other was instant (idiot grocery workers who don't know how to stock shelves!). Needless to say I was a bit dismayed but in the interest of time and money I decided to make the best of it and push onward.

Therefore I dumped the 6 cups of milk in and started cooking away. Of course I picked a burner that I had previously overflowed instant mashed potatoes on (I am infamous for doing this) and so it starts smoking and the fire alarm is going off and the dog is barking and the house is smelling like burned milk and the pudding all the while is needing to be stirred - I'm moving with the punches, telling the dog to be quiet, jumping up on a chair to quiet the fire alarm, back to stir, opening the porch door, back to stir, running after the dog to make her stop barking back to stir...you get the picture. Meanwhile the horrible smell of burned milk is not going away even though it should have been burned off the burner by now - so I suddenly realize maybe the mixture pudding is not turning out well. I tip the pot to the side and realize the bottom is burning because the pudding is thicker than it is supposed to be in the beginning and therefore if I let the wisk scrape the bottom I'm going to pick up those gross burned things on the bottom. Again, instead of admitting defeat I power through and decide I'll just wisk the top of the pudding and deal with with burnt bottom after the fact. The pudding is thickening, and finally it's time to finish up so I dump it in another container where I can mix in the pumpkin and put the pot in to soak.

At this point the house has quieted down, although it still smells like burned milk. I'm a little concerned the pudding is going to taste burned, but it's too hot to taste and I figure the pumpkin will mask it so I dump it on it, along with the brown sugar and cinnamon to complete the recipe. I throw it all in the fridge and start dishes while I await the gingerbread to finish cooking. Once the dishes are done and the gingerbread has cooled a bit I start crumbling it in the bottom of the bowl as directed by the recipe. I figure at this point the pudding will be cool enough to taste, so I pull it out of the fridge and grab a spoon...and wouldn't you know it it tastes like burnt milk - which is about as pleasant as the smell. So now I have an enormous bowl of burnt milk pumpkin vanilla pudding and half crumbled gingerbread, and the church dinner is 2 hours away - cutting down significantly on any chances of trying a new recipe or doing this one over. I'm annoyed that I just wasted all this time, Kaylinn starts barking again, the house still smells like burnt milk, and I'm getting ready to pour 10 dollars of food down the drain.

So I accept defeat and cut up the other half of the gingerbread that is not yet crumbled and put it on a plate for church. Unfortunately I still have half of the gingerbread crumbled in a bowl, so I will therefore attempt this experience tonight in hopes it turns out better for tomorrow's Thanksgiving meal!