Pudding Pops

I have a weakness for pudding. I think it started at a young age. My grandma would always tell the story of me asking for pudding and her not understanding what I was asking for. When Grandma would make pudding, she used an egg beater. I can still remember the sound that it made as she mixed up the pudding. As with anytime that she was in the kitchen, you would hear her humming a soft tune while she was making it too.

Now, I find myself buying pudding from time to time, simply to have on hand for a quick and easy dessert or treat. The other week, when I cleaned out my pantry, I found a few boxes tucked in back and created a cookie that was super tasty with the pudding. I also had a few boxes of cook'n serve pudding that had been purchased by accident one time for a recipe (nothing wrong with Cook'n Serve, but generally if you are using pudding in a recipe, it needs to be the instant variety).

The other day, I decided it was time to use up that pudding. I had some excess milk in the refrigerator (some weeks we easily go through 2 gallons, others we barely get through one), so it seemed like the right time to make it. As I was making it, I was suddenly inspired - pudding pops!

When I was a kid, I can remember Bill Cosby doing commercials for Pudding Pops. I'm not sure if they were new or had been around for a while at the time, I just remember that he was the spokesperson and did the commercials. Of course, I also remember that I rather enjoyed eating the frozen, creamy pudding treats and figured that the kids would too.

I grabbed my popsicle making tubes (what exactly do you call those?) and filled them with the warm pudding. I put in the sticks and set them in the freezer. The kids were very excited to try them the next day. Of course, they feel now that we should have them more often.

So, when I made the German Cream Puffs this weekend, there was so much Vanilla Cream left, that I decided to put it in the popsicle molds and make pudding pops (cream pops?) out of the leftover cream. The drawback of cooled pudding/cream is that the finished pop has more 'bubbles' in it, but they still taste just as sweet.

Not only is it a fun to make treat, but it is a great way to use up milk so it doesn't go bad.

They were so good, that now I'm thinkking of finding a recipe for using pudding to make ice cream too!

This post shared at Works for Me Wednesday.