Chocolate pudding

Chocolate pudding made this way is something you can eat without feeling guilty.

I take about a pint in total of dairy milk (usually skimmed) and soy milk in roughly equal proportions (dairy milk only probably also works) and add a very generous table spoon of cornstarch (cornflower in UK English) and about 5 saccharin tablets (other sweetners probably also work) and fairly traded cocoa powder. I boil them all up together, I try to avoid the courstarch becoming lumpy but any lumps are sorted later when I blend the product. While the liquid is heating up I sort out some fruit, I have tried, pears, bananas, sweet apples, grapes and combinations of the above, they all work. If the fruit are fresh I cut them up while waiting for the liquid to boil, more often I take fruit that is ready cut out of my freezer. (I tend to buy large amounts of fruit and vegetables at a cheap local market, cut up and freeze surplus before it deteriorates.) Once the liquid is boiling I add the fruit. When everything is cooked I blend it, sit down and enjoy.

This tastes similar to the chocolate puddings or chocolate mousses that can be bought but is much healthier as it contains less sugar and plenty of fiber. The fruit can be tasted. Made this way the consistency varies. It is probably possible to get a product with more standard consistency and thickness by measuring quantities more carefully than I do but the water content of the fruit will always vary unpredictably. I like it however it comes out.

It is probably possible to put it in the fridge when cool and make it into a chocolate mousse but I like it warm and freshly made.