Whether this should be a cold sauce to spoon over fresh cut fruit or served like a liquid fudge, this “pudding” is dead simple to make and will satisfy that need for chocolate to the core of you. It’s like cold truffle chocolate filling that melts in your mouth even with cold fruit in the same mouthful to cut through the richness. I’ve poured this pudding directly over frozen fruit to chill the pudding down before it can form a pudding skin.

1 can full fat coconut milk

1/3 cup cocoa (the best you can find; this is the recipe to splurge on the Black and Green cocoa)

1/3 cup coconut sugar (could use regular, I thought it went well with the milk)

1/2-1 cup of chocolate chips (in a chocolate emergency, could double the cocoa and the sugar, the coconut milk is very rich)

1/2 tsp decaf instant coffee (or shot of espresso)

1/4 tsp salt

2 1/2 Tbs cornstarch dissolved into 1 cup cold milk (could use *any* milk, dairy or otherwise)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Heat coconut milk, cocoa powder, sugar salt and coffee in a pot until boiling.

Add cornstarch to cup, stir in a little bit of the milk until a smooth paste is formed, then add rest of milk. Add cornstarch and milk to boiling coconut milk. Add chocolate chips. Turn heat down to medium. Stir constantly. The pudding will thick considerably. The chocolate chips might scorch the bottom of the pot so keep stirring until gritty raw cornstarch taste is gone.

Add vanilla off the heat. Stir to combine. You could add 1-2 Tbs butter or coconut oil at this point and stir to combine, but as it is, this is the most amazing pudding and doesn’t need all of that. Between cornstarch and coconut milk, this sets up well enough to be used in a chocolate silk pie (prebake pastry, allow to cool completely before starting the liquid fondue as a pie filling.)

Once cooled in the fridge, you could beat the liquid fondue with beaters to make what would be one of the world’s best icing for a cake. As long as the coconut milk and the chocolate stay room temperature or below you’d have a texture that would be firm to the tongue but melts in the mouth better than cocoa butter.

There are so many uses for this. You could line a loaf pan with parchment paper and make a semi-froddo (or make it two levels, subbing out white chocolate for the cocoa and chocolate chips, maybe using real vanilla beans instead of decaf coffee for the white level. I’m sure if you fooled around with the milk to ratio with the ice cream “custard” in a traditional ice cream churner.