Homemade Chocolate Pudding

Into a medium-sized pot, add the milk and put it on the stovetop. Don't turn it on to heat just yet. Add the cocoa powder and the granulated sugar into the milk and whisk until it is uniformly mixed into the milk. There should no longer be any dry cocoa powder floating around. Set the pot aside for now.

Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put the egg yolks into a medium-sized bowl. Save the egg whites for another recipe like coconut macaroons or cinnamon stars.

Now add the powdered sugar to the egg yolks and mix these two ingredients together with the normal beaters of your electric mixer. Keep mixing until you have a creamy consistency that gets lighter in color (more white than yellow).

Add in the cornstarch and the same amount of milk from your pot. Once again use the electric mixer to combine everything well. Set this mixture aside.

Go back to the pot of milk on the stove. Whisk regularly while bringing the cocoa powder milk to a boil.

Once the milk is boiling, remove it immediately from the burner. Pour the bowl of egg-sugar-cornstarch mixture into the milk pot while whisking constantly. A second set of hands is helpful for this step!

Once the bowl is empty, place the pot back onto the hot burner and let the mixture simmer for 1-2 minutes as it thickens. Be sure to whisk constantly.

Once the pudding had thickened, pour the pudding into serving bowls and let it cool. The pudding will thicken a little bit more as it cools in these bowls.

You can decorate the chocolate pudding with fresh fruit (like sliced strawberries) and/or whipping cream before serving.