Chocolate on 1st

Am I crazy or what! Tea and chocolate! Yeek - was my first reaction - But thinking about it - I love chocolate cookies and cakes with Tea, then why not spice up chocolate with tea! I was bold enough to try the combination - Trust me I loved this pudding! I used "TAZO" spiced black tea to flavor up the chocolate pudding. There are many other flavored teas out there that I plan to combine with chocolate pudding. Btw, aren't the cups cute :)

Ingredients (serves 4)

1 cup milk chocolate chips (Ghiradelli)
1 1/2 cups milk. Boil the milk and spice it up with tea (ie dip in tea bags to infuse milk with the tea flavors)
2 tablespoons powdered sugar (more might be needed-depends on taste)
1/2 cup eggs or equivalent egg substitute

Melt chocolate chips in the microwave according to the instruction on the packet (it took me about 30 seconds on high power and 60 seconds on medium power on microwave). Add the tea spiced milk. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with sugar and gradually whisk in the chocolate and milk mixture.

A useful tip I follow from Food network - whenever mixing warm/hot milk to room temperature eggs, do it slowly, else eggs will scramble and you wouldn't get smooth mixture. So add few tbsp of milk intially and whisk the mixture. This will allow the eggs to stabilize to the temperature of the warm milk.

Pour the egg + chocolate milk mixture into ramekins or cups and place in a deep dish. Pour warm water into the baking dish around the ramekins/cups until the water reaches the edge of the ramekins/cups. In a preheated 325F oven, bake the pudding for about 50–60 minutes, or until a fork inserted into the pudding comes out clean. Serve warm or chilled Tea spiced chocolate pudding with a dollop of whipped cream or vanilla yogurt and sprinkle of cinnamon/nutmeg.

Tea and Chocolate are few of my favorite and the combo would be ideal to send to the bindiya's event "These are a few of my favourite things"