Minty Choco Chip Pudding

Look ma, no cooking! Just combine, whisk, stir, and pour ingredients into cups. Ready to eat within minutes. Reasonably lo-cal at a smidge over 200 calories each container.

The idea for the flavor came from a recipe for mint soft-serve ice cream that's in page 20 of the Cuisinart Instruction Booklet (for soft-serve ice cream maker). Having tried the recipe and stirring in grated Wilton Dark Cocoa Mint Candy Melts, I figured the flavors can transfer to a pudding recipe. The ingredients for the ice cream are as follows:

1 cup whole milk, well chilled
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 cups heavy cream, well chilled
1 teaspoon mint extract (may use peppermint or spearmint)
4-5 drops green or pink food coloring

The boxed instant vanilla pudding, which I had on hand, listed the following ingredients for the normal recipe:

1 package instant pudding powder
2 cups of milk [Whisk into pudding powder for 2 minutes.]

In assessing suitable amounts of additions, I considered the following factors:

• The pudding fluids amounted to 2/3 of the ice cream ingredients.
• The ice cream contains lots of air, thus, spreading out mint flavoring by volume.
• The pudding powder already contains sugar.

My pixstrip shows the implements I used (YMMV), the ingredients, and the cups of pudding.
Ingredients

• 1 package instant pudding powder
• 2 cups of nonfat milk
• 1/2 teaspoon spearmint extract
• 4 drops green food coloring
• 2 ounces grated Wilton Dark Cocoa Mint Candy Melts, replaceable with chocolate chips, minty or otherwise

Instructions

1. Whisk the powder and milk for two minutes.
2. Add the extract.
3. Add the food coloring, one drop at a time. More on that later.
4. Stir in the grated candy. Otherwise, you can add Hershey's or Nestle mint chocolate chips, which you might find either at your supermarket.
5. Pour into 4 containers. Sprinkle some candies or chips on top if you like. Eat now or store in fridge for consumption later.

Post-Recipe Thoughts
Good that I guessed right to not put in a whole teaspoon of the extract. As for the food coloring, I wish I had thought earlier to try the blue food coloring, a drap at a time, as the pudding started out vanilla yellowy. Y'know, blue and yellow make green. Oh, well, next time.

I stirred in candy melts, which I had grated and stored in the fridge awhile back. I did experiment with a few regular-sized chocolate chips for bouyancy. I spooned a very small sample of the mixed pudding into a paper cup and stirred in the chips. The pudding had thickened up enough during whisking so that the chips did not sink to the bottom. (Yay!)

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A similar but different pudding recipe: "Really Quick Mixed-flavor Pudding"