Recipe: Black Sesame Chocolate Pudding
Un-cynic your fridge's dessert options with grounding nutty and earthy notes
The below excerpt from Nick Cave (musician, artist, thinker) is one of the most thought-provoking things I read this week. What I also appreciated about it was how it got me to think about where people remove optimism from the creative process…”oh, that won’t work” “those flavors won’t go together”. One such chocolate that reminds me of breaking through this wall of assumptions is an early creation by Mackenzie Rivers of Map Chocolate and the Next Batch, entitled ‘Meteor Shower’, which blended black sesame and black salt with Honduran cacao. Since that taste, and repeated purchases, and a volunteer weekend at her NW Chocolate Festival booth to see other people light up when they tried it, I began to see this ingredient as a hopeful friend for some chocolates, not foe. hope you’ll try this month’s recipe and see if you agree.
“Cynicism is not a neutral position — and although it asks almost nothing of us, it is highly infectious and unbelievably destructive. In my view, it is the most common and easy of evils.
I know this because much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent. The truth is, I was young and had no idea what was coming down the line. I lacked the knowledge, the foresight, the self-awareness. I just didn’t know.
It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, to understand that it was crying out for help. It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value, and it took a devastation to find hope.
Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on Earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act, as small as you like… keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time, we come to find that it is so.”—Nick Cave, in response to a young father afraid that his cynicism would affect his young son via The Marginalian
Recipe: Black Sesame Chocolate Pudding
roughly 4 servings
Ingredients:
150ml Cream
500ml Whole milk
60g Egg yolks (from 3 large eggs)
100g Chocolate (earthy, chocolatey, creamy, nutty and grassy :think hay, bamboo, or dried sweetgrass: flavor notes would work nicely)
40g Black sesame seed butter/paste
40g Sugar (or 1:1 substitute)
pinch salt (if you have black salt, decorate with it if you prefer!)
Toasted black sesame seeds; as desired for decoration
Directions:
1) Measure out all ingredients using scales. Before cracking, bring the eggs to room temperature. Chop the chocolate into fine shavings.
2) Combine the sugar with the cream and milk in a pot, heat/stir over the stovetop until the sugar dissolves, and bubbles began to slowly show on the sides—do not boil.
3) In another bowl, whisk the egg yolks together with the sesame seed butter. Slowly pour the warm (but not boiling) liquids into the egg mixture, adding little by little— evading “scrambling the eggs”.
4) Return the combined mixture to the stove. Heat on low to medium heat, stirring continuously, about 3-4 minutes for the custard to form. Add the chopped chocolate midway to melt and continue combining to the mixture.
5) Remove from the stove. Stir again in a few minutes to ensure all ingredients are incorporated. *If you see clumps that appear to be scrambled eggs, you can sieve the custard before pouring into cups and storing in the refrigerator.
6) Pour into serving vessels, such as stout whiskey glasses. Sprinkle with black sesame seeds for decoration. Refrigerate at least 3 hours or overnight. **If storing for more than the time it takes to set, cover to avoid a hard top layer from forming and decorate at time of serving.
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Courtesy of Lauren Heineck, chocolate maker at WKND Chocolate (wkndchocolate.com) and writer/founder of laurenonthewknd.substack.com.
Recipe contributed by Lauren Heineck, recipe developer and food writer at laurenonthewknd.substack.com