Your Instant Pudding Will Taste Irresistible With One Simple Swap

What's better than classic instant pudding? It's basically magic that you can mix a box of sweet powder with milk and come up with a bowl that tastes like childhood after-school snack memories.

Things can get boring when you are working with only two ingredients, but instant pudding is very easy to doctor up. Instead of grabbing a gallon of regular milk, reach for chocolate milk the next time you are whisking up a bowl of the good stuff. Doubling down on the chocolate flavor is just one of the tricks to make instant pudding taste homemade; It adds an extra layer of richness and luxury to the otherwise basic mix, and makes the childhood favorite taste exceptionally better than anything you can get out of a plastic snack cup. In addition to a richer flavor, the super creamy texture of most store-bought chocolate milks will also add more fat — and therefore, a more silky texture — to your instant pudding.

Instant pudding can upgrade French toast, but it is also underutilized in how many ways you can doctor it up and take your dessert or sweet, midday snack to the next level, on its own. Chocolate milk is just one of the many ways you can make a simple swap and create something stellar.

The best part is that it does not require any extra work on your part; Just sub equal parts chocolate milk for the regular milk called for on the package directions and you'll have a deeply flavored pudding unlike you have ever had before. The one potential issue is the chocolate milk making the already sweetened pudding too sweet, so you can consider cutting it with half chocolate milk and half regular, if that is a concern.

After mixing and giving it time to thicken up, you will be ready to dig in. There are further additions that will one-up your pudding game, like mixing in flavorings and extracts. A dash of mint extract can give you a cool Andes mint vibe; there's almond extract for nuttiness; or even just vanilla for a deeper layer of flavor. From there, you can add toppings — inspired by the cookie crumbles and candy of dirt cups — to make the childhood favorite taste like a real indulgent treat.