Homemade Butterscotch Pudding

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“Sometimes you need to take a departure from what you do in order to get inspiration.”
Tori Amos

There are several wonderful, beautiful and honestly written blogs that I habitually read amongst the chatter of the internet. What I love about each of them is how they jog my brain and create conversation within my inner walls. They allow me to travel to places I will likely never get to. And they spur inspiration, which is exactly how this Homemade Butterscotch Pudding came to be.

One of my favorites is The Bojon Gourmet written by Alanna, who has incredible skills when it comes to gluten-free baking, photography, and cooking in general. Looking at her recipe for what looks to be the perfect Gluten-Free Pie Crust, I was dreaming of the glossy rhubarb pie I could make. But alas, Spring has yet to arrive here in Minnesota, so my wandering sweet tooth found her Butterscotch Pudding. Without skipping a beat, I was off to the kitchen.

It turned out perfectly buttery and caramelesque, reminding me of my absolute favorite ice cream – local Izzy’s Salted Caramel. As I took a spoonful of the warm, creamy pudding I sank into one of those “close your eyes and escape” moments. The deep brown sugar, sweet cream, and flecks of vanilla bean scattered throughout make for one amazing naturally gluten-free dessert. And yet another perk – it comes together in less than 20 minutes.

I’m thankful for the inspiration Alanna gave me, and I’m also thankful for her dedication to retesting and evolving recipes to get them right, as she talks about with both the pudding (which she tested 9 times!) and pie crust. I’m not sure people know that as recipe developers, we don’t always get things right the first time, which honestly is part of the fun. Plenty of my “great” ideas have become squirrel food, or I attempt to salvage them by transforming them into something else. We may not have a culinary degree or a professional kitchen, but part of our passion lies within the intricacies and science that comes with cooking.

We also enjoy scraping every last bit of something as delicious as this butterscotch heaven, or even the mistakes.

You can find this recipe on The Bojon Gourmet, which I barely adapted. My only changes being:

• Using soy milk in place of the milk and half & half in place of the cream because that’s what I had on hand. The texture turned out perfect – smooth and creamy, not too thin nor too thick.
• Garnishing the pudding with shards of top notch 85% dark chocolate, a perfect complement to the buttery, caramel flavor.

I hope you all have a great rest of the week and if you have sources of inspirations, I’d love to hear about them!