Strawberry Pudding Recipe: 4 Ways to Make Strawberry Pudding

Strawberry pudding is an egg yolk-based custard containing strawberry purée or strawberry flavoring. All homemade pudding recipes, including vanilla pudding and chocolate pudding, start with a pastry cream base. You can find pastry cream in chocolate eclairs, fruit tarts, and doughnuts. Home chefs can add different forms of flavorings to a pastry cream base to make a custom pudding—for example, melted chocolate, flavor extract, or in the case of homemade strawberry pudding, a fruit purée.

People sometimes call another dessert—a dish similar to a classic Southern banana pudding—a strawberry pudding. However, this other version includes layers of whipped cream, fresh or macerated sliced strawberries, and vanilla wafer cookies—and no actual pudding.

A pastry cream recipe is the standard base for any pudding, but there is more than one way to make custard and impart a strawberry flavor.

1. 1. Add strawberry preserves. The addition of strawberry puree is a more common method of making strawberry pudding, but you can substitute preserves. Strawberry preserves have chunks of strawberries in a silky, sticky gel. Preserves tend to contain more sugar than a purée, but you can offset that with an acid-like lemon juice or coarse salt. The base custard recipe might require more cornstarch than normal to keep the pudding mixture at the right thickness.
2. 2. Boost strawberry flavor with extract. If your fresh strawberry purée doesn’t have enough strawberry flavor due to seasonality, you can use strawberry extract to amp up the strawberry flavor. For the most natural-tasting flavor, look for a strawberry extract that is clear, without any artificial colors, artificial flavors, or other artificial ingredients.
3. 3. Substitute heavy cream for whole milk. Usually, a custard has whole milk in it, but for a luxuriously thick and creamy custard, you can try using only heavy cream or a combination of whole milk and heavy cream. Cut back on the cornstarch when you’re using heavy cream because it is already thick; you won’t need to add much thickener to achieve the right consistency.
4. 4. Use instant vanilla pudding. If all you have in the kitchen is instant pudding mix, you can use it for an easy strawberry pudding. Pudding mix contains sugar, a flavoring of some kind, and thickeners. Just add cold milk and strawberry purée to the pudding powder and stir until everything is fully combined. Add the strawberry mixture first, so you can control the thickness of the pudding while adding the milk.

Owing to its pink color and cool texture, strawberry pudding is a quintessential dessert around Valentine’s Day and during the warm summer months. It’s also versatile, as you can serve it alone or mix it into other recipes. Here are four ways you can use strawberry pudding:

• No-bake cheesecake: Mix together cream cheese, sour cream, whipped cream, gelatin, and strawberry pudding. Pour it all into a crust of graham crackers or vanilla wafers. This cheesecake only requires refrigeration to allow the gelatin to set, unlike a baked cheesecake, which requires a long baking time to set the cheesecake custard.
• Pudding pops: Creamier than frozen yogurt but not as luscious as churned ice cream, pudding pops are simple to make. Spoon strawberry pudding into ice pop molds and store them in the freezer until the pops become fully frozen. They won’t freeze completely solid, so they remain creamy.
• Strawberry shortcake: Use either a lightly sweetened biscuit or a soft sponge cake as the base for a shortcake. Fill it or top it with homemade strawberry pudding and sweetened whipped cream. Garnish the creation with sliced strawberries.
• Trifle: A layered dessert of cake, whipped cream, and a crunchy element, a trifle also includes pudding. Make a strawberry pudding trifle with pound cake, whipped cream, strawberry pudding, and crushed wafer cookies.