Vanilla Pudding Pops!

As most of you know, motivating a kid in the summer to do their chores can be akin to the response you'd expect from them if you  asked them to donate a kidney. They will recoil in horror and run and hide from you at all costs, until hunger and the call of air-conditioning beckon them back to the house. They begrudgingly pick up their room, weed the garden, and sort all the recycling for a few meager shillings, just to get the rents' off their back.

I was no different in my youth, except for the fact that my family owned and operated a 52 site campground, so there were chores galore, and alas, all my sister and I wanted to do was sleep until noon. But, we all have our different motivations in life, and two things I would do just about anything for back in the day were a new CD and a Jello Pudding Pop.

Out of all the popsicles that the eighties produced, (the Push-up, the Disney themed,the gross long  plastic bag full of frozen Kool-Aid type crap, and  the beloved Astro-pop) no one  frozen snack could hold a candle to my beloved pudding pop. Waving one of those suckers in my face would have a promise of being up by 7 a.m. to do just about anything short of kidnapping and ransoming the neighbors cows.

Here is the great Bill Cosby pushing the pudding pop, a marketing ploy that worked on me like a charm:

If you're feeling nostalgic for Bill Cosby commercials, I encourage you to go on YouTube and look at some of them. It was hard for me to pick a video to use, because a lot of them are seriously quite pervy, something myself and my parents somehow overlooked back then, unless like nowadays they were more into subliminal innuendos in 80's commercials instead of just showing Katy Perry naked...... ..

Flash Forward 17 years to 2008:

I was teaching a cooking class a few years ago on pies, and as I was making the vanilla pudding  for the filling and  a  lightbulb went off, (followed instantly by a deep, passionate yearning for a pudding pop). I went to the grocery store the very next day to see if they even made them still, and  what-ho, they did!

When I excitedly unwrapped one to consume it,  my heart fell. What was before me was a sickly, pale yellow substance on a stick, that smelled like chemicals and tasted like cheap sugar and artificial vanilla flavoring. It's always sad when foods you really loved and cherished in memory are so disappointing in grown-up life. Much like Capn' Crunch and its mouth lacerations and dill pickle chips (seriously, what was I thinking with those???) the yum-factor of the pudding pop had faded with my youth...

Then I decided to resurrect this idea, and I'm sure its been done before by many other people who just want a delicious pudding pop to taste like they remember it, milky, buttery, and like actual vanilla. So I took my recipe I always use for Vanilla bean pudding and made some darn pudding pops of my own.

Vanilla Pudding Pops!

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons conrstarch
• 1/2 stick unsalted butter
• 1 t. salt
• 3 cups half-and-half
• 4 egg yolks
• 2 T. vanilla

Directions: Place half-and-half in a medium saucepan on medium-low heat and whisk until it simmers. Mix sugar,cornstarch, egg yolks and salt together, and add to half-and-half  and whisk until cooked, should resemble pudding, about 5 minutes.Remove from heat, strain through mesh strainer (this isn't totally  necessary, but pudding will be much smoother if you do this step) and stir in butter and vanilla. Refridegerate in a bowl with plastic wrap smoothed over pudding to prevent a skin, about 2 hours. Scoop pudding filling into popsicle molds or ice cube trays, and freeze up to 3 hours.

Oh    my     stars... 

Here they are!!!! I could have wept for joy when I first plucked one out of the popsicle mold and it was fragrant with  a deliciously creamy vanilla aroma. Since they are pretty rich, I used my smaller popsicle  molds for these puppies. 

 A pile of delight, although the word "pile" doesn't necessarily call to mind images of delight I guess...  Just trust me, these were so  great! 

 Perhaps not the most photogenic treat, but never fear, you won't be looking at them for long! ( because you'll be swiftly devouring them).

The success of these has inspired me to try and recreate the other pudding pop flavors, chocolate pudding and choco-vanilla swirl, so stay tuned! Mr. Cosby would be so very proud...

I am holding on to what's left of summer by making frosty treats until the bitter end. That end of warm weather may come in three weeks with a 50 degree day, or it could last until October. But for now, the heat's a blazing, and I am going to sit outside with my pudding pop and a giant nostalgic smile on my face.