Healthy (Really!) Two-Ingredient Chocolate Pudding

This one’s for anyone who wants a treat that doesn’t contain white sugar. Or who’s craving chocolate with vitamins in it. And it’s for parents who can’t get their kids to eat a vegetable. Oh heck, it’s for anyone who wants to try something different!

My brother sent me a TikTok video of this recipe and I tried it on the weekend. Apparently it’s been around for a several years and shared by various social media types. The pudding’s two ingredients are – wait for it – chocolate and butternut squash.

You heard me!

I love butternut squash soup so I purchased two of the vegetables and made both at the same time.

I’m sure you can take shortcuts but I decided to make this exactly the way the woman in the video did it. She peeled and cubed the squash before boiling it until it got soft. My squash was rather large so I used about 3/4 of it and kept the rest aside for roasting later in the week.

While the squash softened I grated the unsweetened baker’s chocolate. Spring turned to summer, autumn arrived and I was still grating. I missed Christmas but eventually I grated 250g.

Finally, my kitchen scale told me it was time. I drained the squash, added it to a large bowl containing the grated chocolate and stirred until it melted.

It didn’t look appealing at this stage.

At this point, the mixture is supposed to be pulverized by a hand blender. I couldn’t find mine. Have I given it away? I’m likely to do that sort of thing. So I squished it all with my squishing tool from Pampered Chef and then scraped it into my blender.

The texture was smooth and the taste – perfection! I’m guessing that a child would want it sweeter but that’s easily done with a little honey or whatever you wish. For us, it’s just right. There’s enough sweetness in the squash to offset the bitterness of the unsweetened chocolate. Yummy!

I ended up with seven rather full ramekins of pudding for about 200 calories each. Not to mention Vitamins A, C and B, manganese, magnesium and potassium. There’s no hint in the taste that it contains squash. Take that, veggie haters! If you’re interested, my soup has less than 100 calories per bowl and even more nutrients and fibre thanks to the squash, sweet potato, onion and garlic. I serve it with a dollop of cream cheese or fat-free sour cream on top.

My brother says he’ll try this pudding recipe too but with roasted squash instead of cubed, and melting the chocolate instead of grating. But really, what would I have done with all of that extra non-grating time? Besides, flecks of chocolate got all over the kitchen so it was a wonderful opportunity to clean, well, everything. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my hand blender.