It is a miserable, rainy, cold, dreary, February day. But, I know what to do to perk myself up. Yesterday, the girls laid five eggs, and when I have an excess of eggs, I make pudding, an extravagant recipe that uses six egg yolks. I use the recipe from my Farmstead Egg Cookbook. It’s the filling for Chocolate Cream Pie, but today I’ll skip the pie part and just have the pudding.

If you’ve ever wanted to know how to make pudding that is perfectly smooth, with no lumps, and has the right balance of flavor to sweetness, follow along with me here.

The first thing to do is to separate the yolks from the whites. I could make meringue cookies out of the whites, but the weather is too damp for those to bake into the perfect airy texture (a rainy day like this makes chewy meringues.) So, I’ll be putting the whites aside and freezing them. As you crack each egg, drop each white into a small bowl, then add it to the rest. If even a speck of yolk breaks in with the whites, they’ll be useless for meringues, so, with this technique, only one white becomes contaminated and not all.

I always assemble all of my ingredients before I start cooking. Then, I clean up as I go along. This makes it impossible to forget an ingredient (a lesson learned when I left the bananas out of the banana muffins.) Here are all of my ingredients measured out and ready.

Notice that I’ve weighed my chocolate. My scale is one of my most-used kitchen tools. I’m using Trader Joe’s Belgian bittersweet baking chocolate. Also, I’m using 1% milk, but use whole if you’d like.

Here are the ingredients:

8 ounces dark chocolate
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
6 egg yolks
3 cups milk

I melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl set over simmering water. Use a large bowl, because you’ll be stirring the rest of the ingredients in later. Mixing in a too-small bowl is frustrating and messy – always use a bowl a tad bigger than you think you’ll need.

After setting aside the melted chocolate to cool a bit, I combine the cornstarch, sugar and salt in a pot. Then, whisk in the yolks.

Aren’t those yolks a gorgeous color? Even in the winter, my hens eat greens and table scraps, so the yolks remain a deep yellow. Once this mixture is smooth, add the milk. If you dump all of the liquid in at once, the flour will become lumpy. So, pour slowly and whisk at the same time.

Now you can turn on the heat. Bring that mixture right up to a boil, but be careful, because milk browns and sticks quickly. Keep whisking. I like to use a pot with curved sides, so that all gets whisked – a flat-sided pot has corners that the whisk cant’ reach.

As soon as it boils, set a timer for exactly one minute. Whisk, whisk whisk! Don’t be afraid of the bubbles! But, don’t have the heat on so high that it’s erupting and splattering all over. After one minute you should have a thick, smooth custard, but there’s always a lump or two lurking, or a bit of stringy, cooked egg white. So, the next step is to strain the custard through a mesh sieve.

Now you can stir the custard into the chocolate. Use a folding-over motion with a spatula. This keeps the pudding free of lumpy air bubbles.

When the color is uniformly, lusciously, chocolately brown, scrape it into a bowl.

Cover so that the plastic wrap is touching the pudding. This prevents a skin from forming as it chills.

Refrigerate for at least two hours. Or have a little bit while it’s warm. I did.