wildscape. literary journal

My Dad’s Recipe for Dark Chocolate Pudding
by Ellie Rose Mattoon

Perfect for friends at a Galentine’s Day party. Best prepared the night before.

1.	Lay everything out on the laminate countertop of your cheap college apartment in a neighborhood close to the police station. At this age it’s easy to ignore that the fridge smells like must and the drawers fall off their hinges and the overhead light looks like it’s from a school cafeteria. But this place is what you can afford, and for the first time in your life a place is yours. You’re twenty years old, and you don’t need anybody.
2.	Call your dad and ask if he can resend the recipe. 
3.	Dad says that pudding comes together like “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It’s a song that escalates at every step even when you think it can’t possibly get better. Mix the cream, milk, eggs, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch, and salt together. When you were younger, you would have impatiently asked your dad to stop here and grab two spoons. It already looked delicious. It already smelled like hot cocoa. But tonight, just place it over heat for a few minutes and feel resistance grow against the whisk as it thickens. 
4.	Bring the mixture to a light simmer on the stove for thirty seconds. Whatever you do, do not let that milk boil goddammit. Do not ruin this for everyone (no one else knows you’re making this). 
5.	Your dad always liked to make food for other people. Remember that one time, he got invited to a friend of a friend’s graduation party and decided to make a Paris-Brest pastry with the idea that everyone would be blindingly impressed. In a single morning, you heard the car leave the garage three times, saw your dad return with an armful of ingredients three times, felt the trash bag stretch with the weight of fresh “not good enough” three times. Three failed attempts at a “good enough” Paris-Brest, then one successful attempt telling him to stop. He brought chocolate chip cookies (still homemade, of course) to the party instead. Back then, you couldn’t understand it. Why was he so desperate to make something that was both intricate and perfect? Ponder the question while you stand over a pot of milk that you can’t let boil even as it sends sweat across your forehead in February.
6.	Remove from heat, then add the butter and chopped chocolate. Now the mixture should make glossy dark ribbons that drip against the side of the saucepan. If pudding comes together like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” this part is the electric guitar solo. Add vanilla and espresso powder until your tiny kitchen smells like the Ghirardelli factory. Aren’t you glad you didn’t trust an Instacart driver who might have gotten you 59% cacao instead? 
7.	Call your dad because the recipe says to strain the ingredients over a colander and you don't own a colander but you own a cheese grater with small holes. Does that work?
8.	It does.
9.	For how selfless it should feel to make dessert for your friends, as you lean down to smell the mixture you feel like the witch from Hansel and Gretl, baking gingerbread to funnel company into her hovel. In a way, you’ve always seen good food as the way to earn company. The better this pudding turns out, the longer your friends will linger after dinner tomorrow. The more likely they’ll want to come back. Of course you love your friends, but plenty of people love their friends through Jell-O mix just fine. 
10.	Cover the pudding with plastic wrap so it doesn’t make that weird skin on the top. It’ll taste fine, but it just won’t look as good.
11.	Look around for a moment at the mess you’ve made of the kitchen. Your botched attempt at mise en place left the sink so full that your Brita can’t fit under the spout. Quality high-cacao chocolate streaks across the vinyl wood floors. Your dad is going to come home to this. Cry.
12.	Stop. Your dad doesn’t live here. This is your kitchen. For some reason that doesn’t make you feel any better. Clean to the sound of “Hotel California” blasting from your Spotify.
13.	Chill for at least four hours and up to overnight. Making chocolate pudding for your closest friends is an emotionally exhausting experience. Maybe take a shower or wash your face before the steamy milk sweat gets into your pores. Put your chocolate-stained sweater in the laundry. Go to sleep and pour a cup of coffee the next morning. 
14.	Also, make sure the pudding is in the fridge while you do all this.
15.	Remember how sad Dad was after his best friend moved to Minnesota. That was around the time he bought a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated and found a KitchenAid from Goodwill. And before you knew it he was making souffles no one in his bible study asked for. Bringing a well-researched espresso machine to the dog park, plugging it into his car, and passing cups of Lavazza across the parking lot. Maybe the order of events is off in your head, but was this really all because his best friend moved away? Maybe he cooks for the same reason you do. A combination of love for others and want of company that no one can really disentangle.
16.	When ready, serve with fresh whipped cream in paper bowls. If they love it, congratulations. You’ve fed your friends into loving you for another day. If they only liked the pudding, turn to the Appendix for advice on finding new friends after your old ones leave you. 
17.	Once everyone has said goodbye (because they always, inevitably, do) text a picture to Dad. Of everyone crowded around your tiny, scuffed table with smiling faces. 

my friends loved it

i’m just like you now

of course i still love you 

If this nonfiction piece made you crave dark chocolate pudding, Ellie Rose was kind enough to share the recipe with us! You can find it as a PDF below, and here is the direct link to America's Test Kitchen's recipe on their website.

about the author // Ellie Rose Mattoon