Recipe: Cracker Pudding or Coconut Saltine Pudding

On my drive home the other day, I turned on NPR and caught a tail end of a podcast, where Dan Pashman described a cracker pudding that he made with Brooke Gladstone. The description of the luscious creamy pudding with its perfect balance of salty and sweet seduced my taste buds, plus I was intrigued at the thought of using crackers. Yes, the every day ordinary saltines that I used to consume as an afternoon snack growing up as a kid. Lately I had been in a mood for a sweet, but not in the mood to bake. The pudding seemed like just the thing to satisfy my sweet tooth.

While the recipe for the pudding that Brooke uses (in the link) is easy enough, I’m not a fan of meringue. Plus Google found me a cracker pudding recipe that was even easier than (and believe me, even the “complicated” cracker pudding recipe is drop dead easy) Gladstone’s. In less than 15 minutes, I had my pudding. It was delicious. Not too sweet with a lovely coconut and vanilla taste. I love the bits of shredded coconut and the creamy mouth feel that the disintegrated crackers give the pudding. I can easily envision making a more coconut flavored pudding by using coconut cookies/biscuits instead of saltines.

No photo. Unless it’s prettily plated, honestly the pudding looks terrible in a snapshot.

Cracker pudding

Makes 2 large portions or 3 normal-sized portions

Ingredients

• 2 cups of milk
• 1/4 -1/2 cup of sugar (depends upon how sweet you want it)
• 16 saltines
• 1 beaten egg
• 1/2 cup of shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla

1. Gently heat milk and sugar together in a saucepan
2. While the milk is simmering, crumble the saltines into the milk. Mix.
3. Beat an egg in a separate bowl.
4. Temper the egg by adding a few ladles of the milk mixture into the bowl.
5. Add the egg/milk mixture into the saucepan. Mix.
6. Add the shredded coconut. Mix.
7. Keep on the stove until the mixture thickens (about 2-3 minutes).
8. Turn off heat.
9. Stir in vanilla.

You can eat this warm or cold.