Turn Over a New Leaf With This Vegan Peanut Butter Pudding

Growing up, I wasn't too fond of pudding. While the instant chocolate variety was popular when I was a kid, my mother still preferred making the kind you cooked on a stove. I so disliked the thick skin that developed on top of it as it cooled.

I wasn't just turned off by the textural element, though. As a child, I was very sensitive — OK, downright picky — about food. I had learned that gelatin, the feature that made packaged pudding set, came from collagen, a protein derived from animals. I simply could not equate that with sweetness.

While I'm an “I'll-try-anything-once" omnivore as an adult, I know that vegetarians and vegans feel similarly to the way I did when I was younger. I'm also aware that there are many alternatives to using gelatin for setting, thickening, and improving the mouthfeel of desserts: pectin, arrowroot, xanthan gum, and seaweed derivatives, such as carrageenan and agar-agar, among others. But all of these, including gelatin, have particular properties. Pectin, for instance, works best with fruit- or acid-based products, while carrageenan is a popular thickener for dairy. Agar-agar needs boiling temperatures to dissolve, whereas gelatin requires only warm water.

Corn starch, I find, is one of the easiest setting agents in the kitchen. When making savory dishes, cooks combine it with butter to form a roux and use it to thicken gravies, soups, and sauces. It does the same for cooked vegan puddings, such as this plant-based peanut butter one. To give this pudding contrast, I slice and re-bake gluten-free brownies, using them as crumb and crouton (aka crisp brownie strips).

Sort of ironic that decades after spurning my mother's cooked pudding, I'd be stirring it up over a flame myself. Mom always did — and still does — know best.