Homemade Vanilla Pudding Recipe

4.80 from 15 votes

Once you’ve made this so simple and so easy homemade vanilla pudding recipe, you’ll never wanna go back to box pudding again!

Prep Time5

Cook Time15

Chill Time6

Total Time6 20

Course: Desserts

Cuisine: Pudding

Keyword: vanilla pudding

Servings:

Calories: 153kcal

Stir the sugar, cornstarch, and salt together in a small mixing bowl. Then, whisk in 1/2 cup of the milk and then egg yolks.
In a medium pan, heat the remaining two cups of milk over medium low heat until it is steaming and foamy but not boiling.
Slowly pour or ladle about ¾ cup of the hot milk into the small mixing bowl with the egg and sugar mixture, whisking quickly as you do to prevent the eggs from heating and cooking too quickly.
Pour all of the egg and milk mixture back into the pan and continue cooking over medium-low heat. Cook and stir continuously with a whisk or rubber spatula until the mixture has thickened and begun to bubble. Allow it to continue bubbling for two minutes.
Remove it from the heat and pour the pudding into a clean bowl. Immediately add the vanilla bean paste or extract and butter. Then, stir until the butter has melted and the vanilla is completely incorporated.
Place a sheet of plastic wrap directly on top of the pudding and refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. This will take about 6 hours, but it will become thicker and set up better if you let it chill overnight.

Makes approximately 6 ½ cup servings.
It will keep for up to 5 days in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Begin by measuring and setting out all of your ingredients and bowls so that you can work quickly when things are warm and need to be combined. This prevents scorched milk, scrambled eggs, and burnt pudding.
Don’t be tempted to turn up the heat for heating the milk or cooking the pudding. It may seem like it’s taking a long time, but a couple of minutes of stirring is so much better than something scorching! So keep that saucepan over medium heat low and no higher!
This recipe doubles well, but will take more time to cook.
If you are noticing any tiny lumps in your pudding as you cook it, don’t worry! It’s probably just a tiny bit of egg yolk and egg mixture that cooked too quickly. To remove them, simply place a fine mesh sieve over the bowl you are going to chill the pudding in and pour it through. Gently stir the pudding to encourage it to go through the sieve, then stir in the butter and vanilla bean extract.
Before chilling the pudding, place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the pudding. This prevents a a rubbery, thick layer from forming over the top, which is also called a skin.