Homemade Pistachio Pudding

I’m not sure if I have alluded to my early dessert history, but I will say that it was pretty box-mix-centric. Growing up, the only dessert my family made from scratch was cookies. Everything else was only semi-homemade. Rice Krispie treats were a common player, as were Betty Crocker cake mixes baked into 13×9 pans and slathered with Pillsbury canned frosting while the cake was still warm, and Duncan Hines brownies.

But on nights when we needed dessert and we needed it fast, we could always scrounge up a box of JELL-O instant pudding mix. It was simple enough that my sister and I could make it without adult supervision. It’s literally just mixing milk with the little packet of magic powder they give you and popping it in the fridge for 5 minutes. (Sure, you could wait longer, but as children, even 5 minutes seemed like an eternity to wait for pudding.) The hardest thing about that recipe was making sure we had a whole 2 cups of milk in the house.

My mom had these parfait glasses we liked to use for our instant pudding, because somehow they made us feel fancy, despite the fact that the dessert they housed cost us less than a dollar and 10 minutes of our time. Not all the glasses matched, so I liked to make sure I got one that held the most pudding. I’m a generous person, but when it comes to pudding, I will knock your teeth out for a chance at more. Especially if that pudding happens to be pistachio pudding.

I have never purchased a box of instant pistachio pudding in my adult life, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t continued to eat it. That’s what family dinners are for. In fact, the only reason I still tolerate my mother-in-law is because she keeps making Watergate Salad at family dinners. (For those of you who don’t know, Watergate Salad is a mixture of pineapple, pistachio pudding mix, marshmallows, chopped nuts, and Cool Whip. In other words, the most delicious potluck-style recipe ever invented.)

It was when my MIL made pistachio muffins and wasn’t satisfied with the flavor that I got curious about “pistachio” flavored items. I had a sneaking suspicion that most commercial pistachio-flavored things, like pudding and ice cream, use The World’s Greatest Extract, also known as almond extract. And I was correct (unsurprisingly, because I’m a genius). If you look at JELL-O’s ingredient list on their pistachio pudding, almonds are the third ingredient (after two kinds of sugar), while pistachios only make up “less than 2%” of the ingredients. After that comes “artificial flavor,” which I would bet money is an almond flavoring.

I wanted to emulate the JELL-O pudding flavor, rather than simply making a “true” pistachio pudding. So, I used half almonds and half pistachios (hey, 50% is a drastic improvement from a mere 2%) and a teensy bit of almond extract to boost the flavor. Of course, the color still doesn’t match the pale, mint-green of the box mix, but only because I decided I didn’t want food dye in my pudding. Real pistachios are not that color, folks. Sorry to burst that bubble.

I don’t have any schmancy parfait glasses yet, so ramekins will have to do for this box-mix knockoff. Is it as easy as just adding milk? Nope. But, ultimately, isn’t making something from scratch so much more satisfying? I’d like to think so.