Homemade Vanilla Pudding is a delicious snack or dessert, made from just a few simple pantry staples. This recipe comes out smooth, creamy and delicious - you will never reach for the boxed kind again!
Whisk together cornstarch and ½ cup milk in 3-4 quart saucepan. Add remaining milk, sugar and salt and whisk until fully combined.
Place saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil, whisking constantly.
Once at a boil, immediately take saucepan off the heat and immediately pour steaming hot milk mixture in a slow stream into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. Blend very well!
Pour pudding back into saucepan and place over medium to medium-high heat. Heat gently, whisking constantly, until notably thickened (pudding mixture will not be thick like finished pudding yet!), about 2-3 minutes.
Take pudding off the heat, then whisk in butter and vanilla. Allow pudding to cool for 5 minutes, then pour into individual serving dishes. Chill at least one hour, better several or overnight before serving.
Store the pudding in the fridge at all times. If constantly refrigerated, it keeps for 5 days.
Notes
Ingredient notes
Milk: I very strongly recommend sticking to whole milk with this recipe. It yields the thickest, creamiest pudding. You can get away with using 2% milk, but please do not use anything with less fat. Skim milk in particular will yield a watery pudding.
Vanilla: Vanilla extract is the cheapest and most accessible way to add vanilla flavor to your pudding. However, you can make it extra-special by using vanilla bean paste instead. OR use ½ of a whole vanilla bean, split open, seeds scraped out. With vanilla extract and vanilla bean paste, you want to add it to the pudding last. With a vanilla bean, you’ll need to add it to the milk from the start – along with the split and scraped bean. Discard the bean before pouring the hot milk mixture over the egg yolks.
Cornstarch: You must use cornstarch in this recipe, do not replace it with flour. Flour will take much longer to thicken, and to lose the raw flour taste.
Butter: Butter is optional, but adds an extra-rich touch to the pudding. Leave it out if you prefer! I don’t always add it myself, especially not when my kids are on a pudding kick and I’m making pudding every week.
Recipe tips
I recommend using a 3-4 quart saucepan to make this recipe (mine in the photos is 2 quart, but I only used a small size for the photos because it was difficult to photograph in a larger pan). If you use a pan that is too small, it will not only take much longer for the pudding to thicken, but the likelihood of the milk boiling over is also much bigger.
Never use an electric mixer for pudding, always whisk with a balloon whisk by hand. An electric mixer is too fast and can cause the starchy structure to break up, yielding a pudding that won’t set right.
Do not use high heat, it will a) cause the pudding to scorch on the bottom of the pan and b) to boil over and c) to scramble the eggs. My induction stove goes up to 10, I cook my pudding on 6.
To keep a skin from forming on top of your pudding, you need to cover it with plastic wrap directly on its surface immediately after filling the pudding into individual jars or cups. Make sure to use heat-safe, food-safe plastic wrap. I hardly ever bother with this and nobody in my family minds the pudding’s skin, but I wanted to mention it because it’s common practice.
One recipe of this pudding yields 6 individual servings of approximately ½ cup each. I use a few glass jars I kept from fancy yogurt, but ramekins or smaller drinking glasses work in a pinch!
Why is my vanilla pudding not thickening?
You may not be heating the milk enough in the first step – cornstarch is activated at around 200°F (95°C), which means it needs to get to 200°F to start thickening a liquid.It is also possible to overmix the starch and break up the structure, but you do really need to whisk excessively for this to happen. Only use a whisk, never an electric mixer. Once your pudding has thickened, stop whisking it and move on with the recipe.