Meringue Clouds Pudding

A special treat that would wait for us when we awoke from the nap when in kindergarten. I remember it exactly, served in dark green glass dishes.

This would be a very classic vanilla pudding recipe you see below. Before we make the pudding we’ll make meringue clouds, using the egg whites.

Meringue Clouds
3 egg whites
1/4 cup sugar
pinch of salt

Rinse a medium-sized pot with cold water and then shake out the excess water. (Doing this step prevents the milk from scorching.)
Using the milk from the pudding recipe – 3 1/2 cups , heat the milk, Set a strainer or colander over a medium size bowl.

Using a mixer with wire attachment, whip the egg whites, when foamy add salt and whip until medium size peaks are formed, gradually add sugar and whip until stiff peaks are formed. Keep an eye on the milk and stir it often.
Once your milk is hot, using a spoon, place spoonfuls of meringue into the milk, gently stir and let cook for a minute. If milk looks like it’s going to boil over, have a glass of cold milk on hand and use a little bit of the cold milk to stop the milk from boiling over. Remove meringue clouds(dumplings) from the milk and place them into to the prepared strainer or colander to get rid of the extra milk.If needed add the milk that you strained into the pot where you are cooking the meringue clouds.Continue until you are finished with all the meringue.Once you are done with cooking the meringue clouds you are now ready to make the pudding. Don’t worry if there are left overs from meringue in the milk.
Measure what you have left over from the milk. If you need more milk, add more milk to meet the pudding recipe milk measure.
Continue with Vanilla Pudding Recipe. Use cold milk to mix all the ingredients in the pudding recipe and add that to your warm milk that you have left.

Vanilla Pudding Recipe

3 1/2 cups milk

1/3 cup plus 3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 egg yolks / save the egg whites, we’ll use them for meringue clouds/

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

In a medium size bowl whisk together 1/3 cup sugar, cornstarch, salt, egg yolks Whisk in 1/2 cup of the milk. Set aside while you heat the rest of the milk and sugar. Have ready a fine medium-sized strainer and bowl as you will need to strain the pudding after it is cooked.

Then pour the remaining 3 cups (720 ml) of milk/you probably have the milk in the pot from before, when we were making meringue clouds/, along with the remaining 3 tablespoons of sugar and bring to almost boil. Remove from heat and gradually pour the the egg mixture into the hot milk, whisking constantly, until the mixture is smooth. . Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to the consistency of mayonnaise (about 2 minutes). Remove from heat and whisk in the vanilla extract. If necessary, pour through the strainer to remove any lumps that may have formed during cooking.

Now comes the fun part, you can either fold the meringue clouds we made before into the cooked pudding, or you can use them as a topping like I did. Or you can do both.

Pour the pudding into serving dishes and refrigerate until well chilled, about two hours.

As you can see I colored the pudding with blue, to create a blue sky with white fluffy clouds. I used some disco dust to give it a little sparkle.