Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Chocolate Pudding Cups of Your Dreams

You didn't know you dreamt about this but I'm telling you you have. And your dreams are my reality, my friends, and now your dreams can be your reality, and I, in turn, will be dreaming about your reality that used to be only dreams you didn't know you dreamt.

This weekend Sean and I made pudding cups out of chocolate and they came out PERFECTLY.


As usual, in the Jen's Log style, a
tutorial for CPCYD:

1. First, steal an idea from
bakerella.com.

2. Make it completely different by making tiny chocolate cups! Using a small bike pump, spend an evening blowing up 80 water balloons. Keep them small. Mold them to accidentally look like peanuts. Fill the sink with soapy water and wash the balloons. Pat dry. Get out some cookie sheets or whatever and put some parchment paper on it, or whatever.

3. Melt some good chocolate. Make it dark, the only form chocolate in which chocolate should exist. Don't burn it. Let the melted chocolate cool a bit. This will help it adhere to the balloons.

TIP:
Sean says to boil the water in the double boiler and turn off the heat before adding the chocolate to the bowl. Don't even have heat on chocolate. It'll melt.

ANOTHER TIP
: melt a substantial amount so you can dip at your leisure, and not have to worry about getting enough chocolate high enough on the balloon.


4a. Spray some nonstick on the balloons, or wipe butter all over them. Sit on a chair while you do this painstakingly while your spouse stands the entire time and even painstakinglyer dips the balloons into the chocolate.


4b. But FIRST, place a blob of chocolate on the paper, and then rest the chocolate-dipped balloon on that, to make a stand.




5. Admire.




6. Put them in a fancy 2-level cardboard carrying device constructed by a packaging wizard and cool them in the fridge for a while. We let it sit overnight. Probably unnecessary. I'm pretty sure chocolate hardens in like 10 seconds.



7. Pull out the balloon cups. Pop balloons with a pin!



8. Look at all the dead balloons.




9. Realize some of them are sticking to the cups. Figure out why and tell me. (Use more non-stick?) Pretend to play an awesome game of Operation that's more like real life, and standing whilst hunched over, use tweezers to delicately pull out the balloons. Try not to mash the cups with your hands or let any part of your lava-skin touch them.



After I did an entire tray of this, Genius Sean brought out some wooden chopsticks to hold the cups in place (they don't stick to the parchment paper very well) which worked like a dream. Oh look, I took some video of that.



TIP:
If you have some holes on the bottom of some cups, add some chocolate pieces from a dud cup on the bottom to cover the hole. You'll be just fine.

10. Admire





11. Now fill them up! We used some Kozy Shack pudding for one tray. For the other, we mixed whipped cream with lemon cream, and added dollops of lemon curd on top.


Video of the lemon:





Video of the chocolate:



12. Drizzle some more melted chocolate over the chocolate pudding chocolate cups of chocolaty chocolateness.







13. Add mint leaves in the lemon ones for fanciness. Realize you made them look just like eggs. Consider that these could also be used as an Easter treat.



14. Throw them back in the fridge.


15. When they've chilled for a while, or when you have to go, take them out and put them in the awesome carrying case of wonders.





16. At the event, stand casually nearby the dessert table so as to be easily spotted by admirers, to hear their compliments. Try and fail to come off as humble. "I know, right???"

17. Almost forget the most important part!!! (but
don't) Get 500 mini-spoons online because that's the smallest amount it comes in. How awesome are these?? You bet I'll use every last one. I eat everything with them. everything.



to show the scale of the tiny spoons...


arrggh, i love them so much; i feel like Lenny.


And there you have it! A fun recipe for a fancy treat in 17 easy steps! Make them today and wow all your friends.

12 comments:

Ruthie said...

Wow, those are amazing! Maybe one day I'll make cool stuff like you.

Stephanie said...

They turned out great. Which ended up being your favorite?

Pedersen Posse said...

Beautiful. The pics are making my mouth water. Thanks. ;)

)en said...

and you are welcome!

Mm... well, you can't go wrong with the chocolate pudding. The lemon was a bit more intricate, and you can never have too much lemon curd. I actually didn't even have one of the lemons, so i'm not sure. It's a toughie.

lindsey v said...

You guys are such creative culinary craftsmen! Those look so fun and yummy.

Alanna said...

Wow. That's all I can think to say. Do you think those would mail well?

Britta said...

Step number 4a I read: "or wipe butt all over them." EEEWW! But only for a moment. I got over it pretty fast.

You're cups look way better than Bakerella's. I wish I could've been at "the event" to admire and taste in person. They look delicious.

Amber Alvarez said...

I GOT TO EAT THESE!

I'm so glad I finally used the interwebs to come to your blog. I missed it. Also, I thought I was going to die when Sean explained how you did this and then I asked the acceptable amount of questions that you can ask when someone is explaining something. I wanted to ask more and more and more and had to reign it in. Now I have this nifty tutorial and the world is mine.

Also: Easter, can we say white chocolate dyed with food coloring to be pastel? Huh, HUH?! I know it will be white chocolate, but won't it be pretty!??

)en said...

totally! dang, too bad white chocolate tastes like poison vomit.

Alanna said...

I know this post is old now, but I had to say this. So my husband was making fun of me for reading random-people-who-I've-never-met's blogs, and so I made him look at this post so he could understand why I have to read your blog. He spent the next ten minutes reading through your posts and admiring just how great your blog is. I think I've converted him.

Good to know complete strangers think you're cool, huh?

)en said...

Oh boy. And my response to that would be: :D :D :D :D :D

Thanks for that!

Brooke said...

Jen, again, you amaze me. So so cool.