Puddings for the freeze and the thaw

Recipes for climate weirding: Chocolate and tahini-orange

As New York claws itself unceremoniously out of an ice hole and straight into unseasonably warm weather — thanks, climate change — I want to shake the whiplashed passersby on Franklin Avenue and shout: It’s ok! All of this is pudding weather! 

My pudding stridency is recent and unrelenting. For reasons mysterious even to me, I have made it a dozen times since this cold snap began, and now I know: There is nothing pudding can’t do. 

Cold, it’s soothing and steady. Hot, it’s a tonic; and — for no reason — much more impressive to serve. Chocolatey, it’s as cozy as a weighted blanket; citrusy, it’s as hopeful as a leaf pushing up through frozen ground. Pudding is an adaptable dessert for our era of increasingly unpredictable winters, and it’s also one that can — in the tiniest, low-carbon-desserty-est way — increase our dwindling odds of more white winters to come.

Pudding is a dessert that is happy to be made entirely, or mostly, with plant-based ingredients. It was the French pastry chefs at Le Cordon Bleu Paris who first taught me that egg yolks (a key conveyer of silkiness in most puddings) mute the flavor of chocolate. Which is sin. Sufficient silkiness can be achieved equally well with a combination of non-dairy milk, the cocoa butter in chocolate, and — if the flavors warrant it — other nut and seed butters. 

Ali Slagle, unsurprisingly, has the most reliable plant-based chocolate pudding recipe on the internet. It made an admirable base layer to my pudding-cup replica of Ben and Jerry’s New York Super Chunk Fudge, which I rounded out with chopped nuts and a layer of vegan ganache (two parts chips to one part oat milk) and ate while curled up like a gremlin on the couch.

But then I craved a pudding for all the weathers, one that sticks to your bones but tastes like spring is on the horizon. Enter: Tahini-orange pudding. Its plushness comes from coconut milk, a bit of vegan (or not) white chocolate, and tahini, though it’s just as tasty with sunflower seed butter if that’s what you have. 

Serve warm, and pass it on: It’s pudding season. And we’re pudding people. 

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Recipe: Tahini-Orange Pudding

This is a pudding for the freeze and the thaw, when your bones need sticking to but you also need a jolt of citrusy hope. It comes together in 15 minutes, so it’s also a good last-minute (or even made-to-order) dessert when you have a few friends over. Use full-fat coconut milk rather than other non-dairy milks for the smoothest, silkiest texture. Use anything orange-ish for the citrus. And use tahini or, if it would save you a trip to the store, sunflower seed butter, which tastes different, but just as good. Weird winters are best weathered flexibly. 

15 minutes

4-6 servings, depending on hunger levels

Ingredients

• 400ml (1 can) full-fat coconut milk

• ¼ cup agave

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• ¼ cup tahini, well-mixed

• ¼ cup oat flour

• 1 tablespoon orange juice

• Zest of one orange

• 2 oz white chocolate, chopped

• Orange slices, for serving

In a medium saucepan, combine the coconut milk, agave, salt, and tahini, and whisk well. Scoop about a quarter cup of this mixture into a small bowl and whisk together with the oat flour to create a smooth slurry (what a word!). Set aside.

Heat the coconut milk mixture to a low simmer over medium-low heat, whisking occasionally. Pour a small amount of the coconut milk mixture into the slurry to further thin it. Whisk well. Then turn the heat to the lowest setting and pour the slurry in a slow stream into the saucepan, whisking constantly until fully incorporated. 

Continue cooking the pudding on the lowest heat, whisking constantly, until slightly thickened, about 2-3 minutes. Remove from heat and mix in the white chocolate chips, orange juice, and zest. 

Pour evenly between 4-6 ramekins and serve warm for maximum show-off. Plop an orange slice or two atop each pudding.