The bake

Okay, this isn’t a bake, since it was made on the stovetop, but this pudding turned out so well–and I’m so pleased with my presentation–I couldn’t resist posting about it. I had been thinking of making a chocolate mousse for Valentine’s Day, but I just didn’t feel comfortable serving something made with raw eggs. It’s one thing to give myself salmonella, but I would have felt terrible if my Valentine’s Day gift to my boyfriend was food poisoning. That’s why I decided to look into chocolate pudding.

I have never made any kind of pudding before, and all my memories of eating pudding are of the Jell-O brand variety (that never actually tasted all that good and definitely weren’t very chocolatey). But I trust the recipes on the Smitten Kitchen website. If this was called “best chocolate pudding,” I knew it would have to be pretty good at the very least. Well, that proved to be true. This pudding was chocolatey, smooth, and not too sweet. I served the pudding in antique teacups along with a dollop of whipped cream on top and chocolate-covered strawberries on the side. It was a perfectly delicious special-occasion dessert, and it was so simple, I think I will make it on not-so-special occasions, too.

The book

I’m reading The Divines by Ellie Eaton, a book I have been anticipating for a little while. This novel is about a clique of girls who attend an all-girls boarding school (St. John of the Divine) in England in the 1990s. The story opens with a scandal surrounding the death of one of the students and then moves to the present day, as newlywed Josephine is coaxed by her husband to tell her about her past. I love a good dark academia novel, and the ’90s references in this one add a bit of nostalgia for me. I’m only 60 pages in, but I can’t wait to see where the story goes.