Spooky Halloween Pudding

Spooky season is upon us, and who doesn’t enjoy all the seasonal goodies - candy, cookies, pudding? But how do you actually make these sweet treats? Today we’ll look at one dessert in particular - pudding - and how its special ingredient corn starch works. Corn starch is made by grinding up the endosperm of corn kernels - the white part inside the shell. This is what you get in a jar at the store. When you combine these granules with water and heat them, they burst and absorb the water. Cooling this causes the corn starch strands to stick together and push out water, giving pudding its firm feel. Enjoy your pudding and have a great weekend! Stay safe tonight!

Recipe:

Ingredients

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 cup milk

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

For decoration: bananas, chocolate chips, clementines, oreos/other cookies, gummy worms

Instructions

1. In a microwave-safe bowl, whisk together the sugar, cocoa and cornstarch thoroughly.

2. Whisk in milk a little at a time so the mixture does not have any dry lumps.

3. Place in the microwave and cook for 1 minute on high.

4. Stir, then cook at 30 second intervals, stirring in between, for 1-2 minutes or until shiny and thick. Make sure to keep an eye on it so the pudding does not boil over.

5. Stir in vanilla.

6. Enjoy! Be sure to decorate with some cute clementine "pumpkins", chocolate-chip banana "ghosts", and creepy-crawly gummy worms.