The Great Pudding Fiasco of 2014

You are reading the words of a survivor of the Great Pudding Fiasco of 2014. ~

First things first. Let me give you a bit of background regarding my culinary abilities: I have none. I cook - almost never. I microwave, I open cans, I peel bananas. ~ I once used half and half instead of whipping cream when making egg tarts for a club bake sale. The result? Inedible tarts that had to be tossed out. ~

So what drove me to make lemon pudding tonight? ~ Well, I've been working in a lab as a summer student for the past two summers and I've noticed that doing cell culture work is a lot like what I imagine cooking to be. ~ Both use ingredients (so what if one uses cells and the other sugar?), tools (pipettes vs. spoons? No worries!), and recipes. ~ I can follow instructions - what would be so hard about trying out the Food Network's Lemon Pudding Recipe? ~

How naive I was just a mere two hours ago. ~ Let me now tell you the story of the Great Pudding Fiasco of 2014. ~

I began by heating up the pan - you usually heat up cell culture media ahead of time, so I figured this would be the same. I cranked the heat up to medium. Since I had no measuring cups (my family is Asian and never bakes), I used a drinking cup and a spoon to estimate volumes. Using my trusty chopsticks (ain't nobody got a whisk lying around), I mixed the cornstarch and sugar haphazardly, then got bored and poured in the milk. At this point I realized that while I had a whole lemon, I did not have a grater or a lemon squeezer, and that my concoction of sugar, cornstarch and milk was already beginning to heat up. I ran to the counter and began slicing the peel off of the lemon and dicing it into what I hoped was zest-sized pieces. Halfway through this process I remembered my boiling pan and ran back to stir with chopsticks, only to discover in dismay that the sugar had started burning under all the milk, sticking to the bottom of the pan. I scraped as hard as I could and lifted out my chopsticks to find globs of burnt sugar stuck on the ends. My pure white mixture was becoming littered with little brown flakes. Panicked, I scraped away as much burnt sugar as I could, stirring madly all the while. ~ Realizing not much time was left, I ran back to the counter to chop more zest. Giving up, I ran back and dumped the large flakes of "zest" into the pot. Realizing now that I also needed egg yolks, I ran to the fridge and grabbed 3 large eggs. I cracked them and accidentally mixed yolk with whites - no matter! Dumped the mixture into the pot, stirred, made more zest and dumped that in, added the salt (a bit too much maybe...), made more zest....

At this point I realized my mixture wasn't congealing. Foolishly thinking that the cornstarch must have also burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan, I added around another 1/4 cup into my mixture. It clumped up instantly despite my vigorous stirring. I took a break to squeeze the lemon for its juices, then realized that I might infuse more flavour into my pudding if I added pieces of the entire lemon into my mixture. I dumped that into the pot and realized stirring was now greatly impeded. More sugar had started to burn, so I conducted my second burnt-sugar-ectomy.

After another 10 minutes of stirring I realized nothing was going to help. I dumped in the lemon juice, added a bit of vegetable oil (because we have no butter at home) turned off the heat and looked around for a strainer. I had this idealistic image in mind of straining the pudding into these cute little mason jars I had, and began that process with bravado. I soon realized I had way too much pudding and that the small strainer I was using with my mason jars wasn't going to cut it. I pulled out my giant red mug, a larger strainer and got to work making pudding in a mug.

This straining process was arduous, especially as I was holding a hot, pudding-filled pan in one hand and ladling pudding into a strainer with the other. I briefly set down the pan on the divider between my two kitchen sinks to take a break. When I lifted it back up, I saw a dent where the pan had been. I freaked and thought that the heat from the pan had melted the sink. I grabbed a glass coaster (which was what I should have done initially) and set the pan down while I examined the sink.

My mom walked into the kitchen at this point (likely drawn in by my under-the-breath swearing) and oggled at the sight. There was pudding over half the kitchen, burnt sugar lumps strewn around my "measuring cups", and one 20-year old girl leaning over a sink in dismay. She came over and I sheepishly explained what I was attempting to do. She just sighed and told me that there had always been a dent in the kitchen sink divider, and that my mason jars were overflowing. Abandoning the sink, I ran back to salvage what I could of my pudding.

My mom attempted to help, then gave up and left me to finish and clean up. I was running out of hope when I licked my fingers during the straining process and realizing that the pudding tasted quite decent - even rather yummy. Encouraged, I continued straining and licking my fingers and the spoon.

Finally, I covered up my mason jars and giant red mug with plastic wrap (much like I would carefully wrap a 96-well plate with parafilm) and left it in the fridge to chill. ~ Only time will tell what happens next.

Prep time 17 mins? Try an hour, with half an hour clean-up time on top of that. ~
Yield of 4 servings? Try two tiny mason jars and one large, red mug. ~