2009_03_12-Pudding.jpgForget cupcakes. Maybe even forget macarons. We've got our sights set on homemade pudding. We'd be willing to admit that this is just a personal obsession, except we're not alone...

We got peanut butter and milk chocolate pudding in the January issue of Bon Appetit, and then the next month, Gourmet came out with recipes for Mexican chocolate pudding and (our favorite) butterscotch pudding. We saw a recipe for chocolate pudding in the Boston Globe, and then Emily Weinstein talked about it in her learning-to-cook series on the Bitten Blog.

There were even pudding recipes in two books we've reviewed recently, Picture Yourself Cooking with Your Kids and Milk!

Really, we think pudding has all the necessary traits for becoming a new phenomenon: it's comforting and has an air of nostalgia, it's easy to make, and it's endlessly versatile.

You can make a pudding that's flavored with simply a bit of vanilla or you can infuse it with creative ingredients like lemon grass, star anise, and loose-leaf tea. Some recipes can get fancy with cooking sugar and adding eggs for thickeners, but it's also perfectly fine to keep it simple with milk and cornstarch. Pudding can even be vegan!

And we're sure that someone somewhere could draw up a cartoon bowl o' pudding that could be made fashionable and then endlessly merchandised!

Would you like to see pudding become the next big trend?

Puddin' Recipes from the Kitchn:
• DIY Vanilla Pudding
• DIY Chocolate Pudding
• Homemade Pudding Cup Bar

Puddin' Recipes from the Web:
• Peanut Butter and Milk Chocolate Pudding from Bon Appetit
• Mexican Chocolate Pudding from Gourmet
• Butterscotch Pudding from Gourmet
• Chocolate Pudding from the Boston Globe
• Emily Weinstein on Pudding from Bitten

(Image: Flickr member pengrin licensed under Creative Commons)