We’ve probably eaten out six times a year for the past six years and we’ve ended every meal with the chocolate budino a rich cold custard the Italian version of chocolate pudding. “Seriously when are you going to make this for us?” someone DM’d me when I showed off my favorite spoon two weeks ago the yin-yang of cold dark chocolate custard and unsweetened whipped cream. She had a point. Since I have Jonathan Waxman’s cookbook it’s particularly rude of me to have never shared it before. The thing is the recipe was too finicky. First there’s the finicky nature of decadence: lots of egg yolks. A huge amount of heavy cream. Lots of good chocolate. And then there’s the finicky quantity: the recipe calls for 9 ounces of chocolate 8 ounces of dark chocolate and 1 ounce of milk chocolate. No one asked but I suspect that if a recipe calls for 9 ounces of butter or chocolate it’s because it has a European origin where in metric it’s about 250 grams. But why would you put this in an American cookbook when we buy things in whole pounds and quarters here? And who wants to buy milk chocolate just to use an ounce? And then there’s the hustle and bustle of the steps: Melt the chocolate. Heat the cream. Beat the eggs and sugar. Temper the hot cream. Put it in a saucepan. Heat it and strain it. Let the chocolate and custard cool separately to an unknown temperature and then mix them together and let them cool further. Of course it’s delicious. But even I a Barbuto Chocolate Budino Superfan don’t have time for that.
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The 'I Want Chocolate Cake' Cake | Smitten Kitchen with Deb Perelman
But now that I can’t go across town to get it right I think I will and I got to work. First I ditched the two types of chocolate and bought and used a 60 percent semisweet chocolate bar. I didn’t heat the cream and it didn’t matter. I didn’t melt the chocolate I just chopped it up really fine and when I strained the hot custard directly over it the chocolate melted for me as the temperature went down which means it takes less time to cool the dishes. Less time to cool means you can eat it sooner — you’re welcome.
I didn’t touch the decadence though. I’m not trying to change what makes it so great. It’s incredibly rich. They served it in espresso cups at Barbuto with a cloud of whipped cream on top because a few spoonfuls is all you need and I encourage you to do the same (rather than watering down its perfection in order to eat more). I suspect they used all the leftover egg whites to make the biscotti they used to serve it with — so deep in the thick cold budino that you really had to pull it out — but that’s for another day. This is for five minutes from now.
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