Chocolate Budino

Chocolate Budino

Do you know the saying, “You say potato and I say potato?” with the sound of the ‘a’ being the variable? Well, I couldn’t help thinking about this as I made my first budino.

Bu-what-o, you wonder? Budino is the Italian word for pudding, in this case chocolate pudding. I recently went to the Taste of the Nation Palm Beach event that benefitted Share Our Strength, a fabulous organization whose goal is to end childhood hunger.

Throughout the event wonderful chefs in our area delighted everyone with samples of their cuisine. One pastry chef made a butterscotch budino that was incredible. It was that night that I learned about budinos.

I went on the Internet to do a bit of digging. I love chocolate pudding and had blogged about one in the past, so I wanted to find out if there is a difference between the two styles.

What I learned is that an Italian budino tends to be a bit less sweet than American pudding and, at least in the case of the chocolate budino I made, is also a bit thicker, a characteristic I loved.

My first inclination was to serve it as is without whipped cream but I was, quickly, overruled. It is rather hard to complain about having to make whipped cream, given that it is one of the quickest and easiest things to make in a kitchen. I served it to friends and family and loved my friend Faith’s 9-year old’s response best of all.

To quote Riley, “It is an out of this world creation, the pudding was like earth and the homemade whipped cream was the cloud on top. It is heavenly.”

From a 9 year old??? WOW, I would love my 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 and 80 year old friends to describe desserts like this!

My oldest son, Joshua, thoroughly enjoyed it (without Riley’s eloquence) but did look at me and comment that he was not so sure that this differed much in taste from my previous chocolate pudding.

Perhaps not, but there is something about the word, ‘budino’ that makes the dessert seem a bit more sophisticated. Joshua may say pudding while I say BUDINO!