The Unusual Ingredient You Should Be Adding To Pudding

As a versatile dessert with wide appeal, it's difficult to top pudding. Whether used in pastries or on its own, the array of flavors and combinations of disparate ingredients is seemingly only limited by the imagination of whoever is preparing the pudding and the preferences of those eating it.

Various pudding recipes have incorporated fruits like bananas and peaches. There are warm classics like bread pudding (and savory Yorkshire Pudding) plus cooler treats like chocolate or tapioca puddings. The dish also transcends cultural boundaries, with variants like Italian sanguinaccio made with pig's blood (per TasteAtlas), Food Network's Indian Rice pudding, and an English sticky toffee pudding (via Food). No matter if you use an instant mix or make your own from scratch, it's likely you can find something to suit anyone's taste.

One ingredient that plays up the creaminess and versatility that makes pudding so popular might also be an ingredient you never imagined using.

If you've thought the only uses of avocados are in savory, spicy dishes, oh what a sad, tiny world you've lived in up until now. Avocados are useful in sweet dishes and will elevate your pudding nearly regardless of what kind you're making.

For example, Food's recipe for a chocolate pudding calls for avocado. The Purposed Plan features a banana pudding recipe and a peanut butter pudding recipe that both rely on avocado as well. Heavenlynn Healthy offers an avocado vanilla pudding recipe.

If you're wondering why you would add avocado to your pudding, WonderHowTo points out the benefits. First, as a superfood, it's hard to top them for nutrition. Secondly, they need no pre-cooking or other prep work, as they're naturally creamy and pliable. Finally, they can replace dairy elements, making them a win for people who can't digest lactose or want a vegan pudding.

WonderHowTo also includes a few tricks to make your avocado pudding its absolute best. Those include ensuring your avocados are ripe (which Jamie Oliver has a hack for), using a food processor, and tasting your pudding as you're preparing it. If you're worried about the flavor of avocado dominating your pudding, WonderHowTo says that keeping your ingredients in balance is the key to avoiding that. As Healthline points out, avocados are actually berries, so putting them in pudding really isn't out of place at all. Just look at it as a big fruit and enjoy.