The Boxcar Children

CHOCOLATE PUDDING

When I was in elementary school, on days when it was too rainy for us to go outside for recess, our teachers would gather us in the library and pull down a giant, yellowed projection screen to watch movies. This should have been the most exciting thing in the world for a seven-year-old, but our librarian always insisted on playing the 1978 animated rendition of Puff the Magic Dragon. Maybe it was the only movie she had, or maybe she loved it, but I cannot describe to you how much I hated this movie. Not only did the entire premise of it terrify me, but it gave me the saddest, most anxious feeling deep in my gut, a feeling that stayed with me for days afterward, with those dulled psychedelic colors and Peter, Paul, and Mary’s eerie crooning creeping into my nightmares. I had a vague notion that Jackie Paper, with his wide, wet eyes and terribly fragile name, was sick or dying—it was all too much.

Finally, there came a day when the rain was blowing against the windows of my first-grade classroom and, panic mounting at the thought of recess, I worked up the courage to ask my teacher, Miss Walker, if I could please do something else during the movie screening. When we all filed into the library that afternoon, Miss Walker ever so quietly pulled me out of the herd and took me over to the bookshelves. “Pick a book and you can read quietly until the movie is over,” she said with a secretive wink. To this day, that memory remains one of the happiest of my childhood—not only because I had escaped Puff, but because of Miss Walker’s infinite and quiet understanding, and her gift to me of thirty minutes surrounded by books.

The book I chose that day, and for many, many days afterward, was the first installment of the Boxcar Children series, a book originally written by first-grade teacher Gertrude Chandler Warner in 1924. The series has been continued by various writers over the years, and there are now more than a hundred Boxcar Children titles. The first book remains one of the most beloved children’s books of all time ninety years later, and with good reason—it’s packed with action and adventure and smart, lovable characters. The stories follow the Alden children—Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny—who have been orphaned. Threatened with the prospect of being separated, the children set off on their own, creating a home inside an abandoned boxcar beside a river.

The books caused quite a stir at first. Parents objected to the children’s happy, adult-free world and the tragic backdrop of their story—all very real, scary stuff. Yet somehow I never once felt upset by the Alden children’s misfortune (this coming from a girl who was destroyed by a magical dragon). Warner, like my own Miss Walker, knew children well, and because of that she wrote about them well. The tragedy that the Alden children face is overshadowed by their resilience and never once puts a damper on their adventurous spirit and curiosity.

The Alden children are hungry for life and for food, and Warner writes about both kinds of hunger brilliantly. The first glimpse we get of the children is of them standing in front of a bakery window, staring longingly at the baked goods and deciding whether to spend what little money they have on bread or cakes. The rest of the book, and all of the books that come after, is full to the brim with food. Between solving mysteries and getting into trouble, the children cook and eat the most tempting-sounding foods: brown bread with cheese, blueberries and milk, fragrant beef stew simmered in a tin kettle over an open fire, and cherry slump eaten underneath cherry trees.

One treat that comes up over and over in the books is chocolate pudding—a dessert that has always been near and dear to my heart. Every Thursday night when I was a kid, my mom would make us chocolate pudding while we watched The Simpsons. She always used My-T-Fine brand cook-and-serve pudding mix, and I never tired of standing by the stove and watching it turn from chocolate powder and milk to a thick, creamy pudding. My sisters liked to have theirs chilled in the fridge first, and Ande would always put a layer of plastic wrap directly on top of hers to make sure it didn’t form that icky skin, but I liked mine still piping hot, a layer of the ice-cold heavy cream my dad used in his coffee poured generously on top.

Among many other things, The Boxcar Children taught me that pudding didn’t always come from a package, that it could actually be made from scratch—a notion that bewildered and absolutely thrilled me. Inspired by the Aldens’ competence in the kitchen, I tried for years to make a chocolate pudding from scratch that tasted as good as or better than the boxed version I knew so well. I failed many, many times, scorching the bottom of the pudding, or ending up with raw cornstarch, gluey textures, and scrambled eggs hidden under chocolate chunks. Still, in keeping with the Boxcar Children’s resilient spirit, I pushed on. Twenty years later I finally have a chocolate pudding recipe that I love, and whenever I eat it (still steaming hot and doused with cold cream) I think of the Alden children in their tiny boxcar kitchen, young and hungry and, against all odds, happy.

THE BOXCAR CHILDREN

Chocolate Pudding

Serves 6

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup whole milk

½ cup sugar

1 vanilla bean, seeds scraped out and pod reserved

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

¼ teaspoon kosher salt

5 egg yolks

3 tablespoons cornstarch

4 ounces good-quality semisweet chocolate, chopped

2 ounces good-quality milk chocolate, chopped

In a medium saucepan combine the heavy cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla seeds and pod. Cook over medium heat until steam starts to rise from the surface and tiny bubbles appear at the edge of the pan. Whisk in the cocoa powder and salt until smooth.

In a large bowl, whisk the egg yolks and cornstarch until they form a thick, smooth paste. Slowly and carefully pour the hot milk mixture into the yolk mixture, whisking vigorously the entire time, until fully incorporated. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thick and creamy (if you have a thermometer it should be at 180°F).

Place all of the chocolate chunks in a heat-safe bowl and pass the hot custard through a fine-mesh strainer over the chocolate. Mix and fold until the chocolate melts into the custard and is smooth and shiny. Eat immediately or refrigerate, pressing plastic wrap flush to the pudding’s surface first to prevent a skin from forming.