Pudding the World on a Spoon With These Local Pudding Spin Offs, Each A special sweet in it's own right

Like Michaelngelo’s Creation of Adam, the one where two men are almost touching each other’s fingertips—puddings are connected like that—they’re a fingertip’s distance from each other in terms of variety. Local ingredients step in and make substitutions for the template pudding that is made from milk, cornstarch and a flavouring agent, mostly vanilla. The West will mostly stick to their dairy and vanilla with a trip eastward fading into fragrant spices, roses, nuts and rice. Have you tried the following puddings? If this list seems inadequate, we have two more up on our site with more special sweets for you to feast on.

1.Grießbrei

Milk shakes hands with semolina and sugar in the German pudding that uses vanilla and cinnamon as flavouring agents. It is cooked as one cooks halwa, waiting for the semolina to soak in the milk and hold the flavours of the additives. The result is a creamy and thick pudding that is best eaten hot, for a change. It is a common breakfast item in Germany where the usual local fruits like cherries, apples, pears, strawberries and peaches are chopped up and arranged on the wide bowl that Grießbrei is served in. Some of the Slavic and neighbouring countries also cook this same pudding, where it is enjoyed with equal enthusiasm.

2.Aletria

Fancy a little pasta in your pudding? Because Portugal makes one with pasta, namely capelleni and angel hair, think vermicelli-thin, during Christmas mostly. It is a tad unusual because it uses milk and sugar to soften the pasta, and once that is done, egg yolks are rapidly mixed into the cooked pasta, transferred to a baking dish and left to set. To the milk cinnamon and lemon are also added to flavour the pudding. Cinnamon powder is used to garnish this dessert and sprinkled in the pattern of the lattice that tops pies.

3.Tembleque

Take a break from dairy, for we have Tembleque, which is a creamy pudding from Puerto Rico made with coconut milk, sugar and cornstarch. It is one of those jiggly ones, even though it's custard-like, and this one is traditionally served with a dusting of cinnamon. It’s in the name which means “wiggly” and going by local traditions it might be cooked with rum, flavoured with vanilla with a hint of nutmeg.

4.Moustalevria

By now you might have memorised what goes into puddings. Considering those, the Greek Moustalevria really stands out. This is because it ditches the traditional fruits that go into puddings to use grapes! Not juice, but crushed grapes with their skin, pulp, seeds, and juices, cooked with flour. Local grape syrup, sugar, almonds, vanilla and sesame are used to flavour this sumptuous pudding made and eaten during the grape harvest season in Greece.

5.Mazamorra morada

You've heard of corn puddings; if you haven't we'll have you know that cornstarch is used to thicken puddings. But Mazamorra morada from Peru is perhaps the most unique pudding of them all because it uses purple corn in its ingredients. The pudding thickens such that on appearance you might mistake it for a chocolate pudding. The purple corn is the star with its supporting cast of fruits namely apples, pineapple and peaches. This one uses sugar, to thicken sometimes instead of cornstarch, potato flour might be used too.

6.Spotted Dick

Trust the English to come up with strange names for desserts that look absolutely plain, however, when you consider the etymology, it makes more sense. Spotted dick is unusual when classified as a pudding because it is cakey, and uses wheat that makes it a sponge cake pudding of sorts. Its street name is even more strange—Spotted Dog, perhaps, because of its mottled appearance owing to the whole raisins or currants spotting this pudding. It is steamed, which is why it looks the way it does.

7.Rožata

From the heart of Croatia comes this custard-like pudding called Rozata, which gets its name from a rose liqueur, called Rozalin. Basically, it is Croatia’s version of the creme caramel, caramel custard or Flan. It comes from the country’s little town called Dubrovnik, which has been making this pudding since the Middle Ages. Eggs, milk, and vanilla sugar, a little lemon zest and the Rozalin are combined and baked in caramel sauce-swathed ramekins. It’s been ages since then but the way it is prepared hasn’t changed and neither have the ingredients making it a super special pudding that is a must try when in Croatia.