14 Delicious Ways To Upgrade Your Desserts With Instant Pudding Mix - The Daily Meal (2024)

Kitchen Cooking

Lynne Ann Mitchell/Shutterstock

ByJay Wilson|Feb. 18, 2024 6:25 am EST

If you want an immediate dose of nostalgia, instant pudding mix is here to deliver. The ultra-quick staple evokes immediate images of speedy yet delicious childhood desserts and has been a family favorite since it first hit the market in 1918. At its core, instant pudding mix is a few simple ingredients, primarily sugar and cornstarch, plus several thickeners, preservatives, and food colorings — as well as, of course, flavorings. When it's all whisked together with liquid and cooked on the stove (or even just plopped into a bowl, without being heated), these ingredients turn into a delightfully smooth, spoonable pudding, which delivers instant satisfaction at, let's be real, a pretty bargain price.

However, while most of us are used to enjoying instant pudding on its own, that's far from the only way it can be prepared. There's a long history of instant pudding mix being used in recipes by enterprising home chefs, where it can provide smoothness, bulk, and additional flavor, or act as a substitute for harder-to-make ingredients. Everything from cheesecake to chocolate chip cookies can be made better by instant pudding, and using it is usually as easy as mixing it in with your other dry ingredients. We've collected our favorite uses of instant pudding mix in this article. ‌

MaraZe/Shutterstock

For such a simple (and common) ingredient in recipes, whipped cream can be a real hassle. Whipped cream can often be too runny or thin, and a well-whipped, luscious cream can lose its structure fast, especially when it comes into contact with warm cake slices or brownies. Instant pudding mix, however, can counteract this. The cornstarch in the dry mix can thicken and bind the cream together, helping to keep it stable for way longer and allowing it to keep its shape when served with hot items.

In addition to this, instant pudding mix can also spike your whipped cream with flavor. Vanilla pudding mix is usually the best choice here if you're after a taste that's versatile and unassuming, but you can also go for broke and mix in chocolate, strawberry, or even lemon flavors for an exciting twist. Just remember that the taste that some instant pudding mixes provide can be pretty artificial, so it's a good idea to round things out with some high-quality ingredients. If you're making a vanilla whipped cream, for instance, add in a dash of premium vanilla extract to give it more depth.

Pixel-Shot/Shutterstock

Lava cakes can be made surprisingly quickly from scratch, but they can also be pretty tricky. You first have to melt your chocolate and butter mixture in a double boiler, before combining it with flour and eggs to make a batter and baking the whole thing in individual ramekins. Arguably the hardest part of a lava cake is getting your timing just right so that the inside is still velvety and smooth while the outside is just set. This can all be pretty annoying to juggle when you have hungry guests waiting for their dessert.

If you have a few extra hours ahead of dinner, though, you can make a slow-cooker lava cake using instant pudding mix and cake mix. Prepare your cake mix and then ladle the batter into a slow cooker, before spooning a combination of instant pudding mix, milk, and some chocolate chipson top of the batter. The whole thing is then slow-cooked for three to four hours. The instant pudding mix gives the lava cake a creamy, pillowy topping, emulating the filling of the classic version and full to the brim with flavor. Making it all in one dish eliminates the need for fiddling with individual ramekins and creates a communal dessert experience.

Emrah_oztas/Getty Images

If you've ever tried to make a cheesecake, you'll probably know how wrong it can go. Cooking it at the wrong temperature or adding too much moisture can turn a baked cheesecake from smoothly set to runny, and no-bake cheesecakes can also suffer from being too thin due toovermixing or inadequate cooling.

With the no-bake version, however, you canensure a creamy cheesecake by using instant vanilla pudding. All you do is add a pack of pudding mix to your cheesecake filling before you pour it into your cake tin. The pudding acts as a binder for the filling, absorbs any excess moisture, and continues to firm up as the cheesecake cools. Just make sure you're using a pudding that contains modified cornstarch and doesn't require cooking, as otherwise, it may remain gloopy.

Vanilla pudding can also give your cheesecake filling an undertone of sweetness that doesn't detract from the cake's creamy flavors. This is a great option for both basic cheesecakes and flavored ones — and while you can use other flavors like strawberry or chocolate, we prefer the simplicity of vanilla.

Bhofack2/Getty Images

Trifle has to be one of the most retro desserts out there — but being retro doesn't mean it's simple. Aside from the numerous layers you have to construct, and the ingredients you have to acquire, one of the main issues comes from its inclusion of pudding. In American trifles, the thick pudding layer provides creaminess, but making it from scratch can prove troublesome. For one, unless you get your cornstarch quantities right, it'll be too thin.

So, take out the hard work and amp up the creaminess by using instant pudding. Grab a packet of instant pudding mix and whisk it with a dash of vanilla, milk, and sour cream. After refrigerating the mixture, you then just have to layer it in between your berries and cake pieces. Instant pudding mix will give your pudding layer the robust structure it needs to not drip to the bottom of your trifle dish, as well as add extra flavor. The addition of sour cream, meanwhile, helps to counteract any excessive sugariness that the mix provides and also reinforces the pudding's structure, keeping everything delightfully smooth.

Boblin/Getty Images

Cookies made with pudding mix may sound out there, but they're taking the world by storm. This nifty addition to cookie dough is a favorite on TikTok and requires little more than adding a packet of instant pudding mix to your regular recipe. The cornstarch in the pudding mix will make your cookie dough a little firmer than usual, but don't worry — when they're baked, they'll simultaneously flatten and soften, creating creamy cookies.

The pudding mix's cornstarch helps to smooth out the texture of the cookies, giving them a silkier, somewhat fudgier consistency than if you were using just plain flour. The taste of the pudding mix, meanwhile, fleshes out your cookies' flavor. If you're making double chocolate chip cookies, a chocolate pudding mix is the way to go, amping up the decadence and immediacy of the chocolate flavors. Vanilla pudding mix can work for basically any other flavor you're making and is particularly good if you're making cookies studded with sugar sprinkles. The vanilla won't be distracting but will instead round out the sweetness in the cookies and stop them from tasting bland or too doughy.

Gmvozd/Getty Images

Making ice cream at home can be a real challenge, and one of the greatest issues people have is consistency. Many people omit a stabilizer from their ice cream recipe, and this can cause the dessert to become too hard when frozen, leaving you with crunchy ice cream that need to be chipped away at with a knife to serve. Including instant pudding mix can help you get around this. The cornstarch in instant pudding mix acts as a stabilizer, with some brands including other emulsifiers like tetrasodium pyrophosphate. These ingredients help to keep your homemade ice cream smooth and creamy and can also help tighten up slightly runnier ice cream mixtures.

You don't even need to add that much instant pudding mix to your homemade ice cream, either: A few tablespoons will usually do the trick. Using instant pudding mix is also a great way to make an egg-free ice cream blend, as the pudding does all the thickening and provides the flavor that the eggs would otherwise deliver. To keep things simple, vanilla pudding powder is your best bet, but don't be afraid to mix it up with butterscotch flavor to give your ice cream some caramelized notes. ‌

Easybuy4u/Getty Images

Making homemade fudge can be seriously tricky. Although a basic recipe doesn't take that many ingredients, it requires you to heat your sugar, butter, and milk mixture to a specific temperature when candy reaches a certain sugar concentration known as the soft-ball stage. This soft-ball stage is required for the fudge to be thick, yet pliable, and to have the right texture when cooled.

What if we told you, though, that instant pudding allowed you to get that texture with no thermometer required? All you have to do is combine melted butter, pudding mix, and milk and boil it for a minute. Beat in some powdered sugar and any extra flavorings you want and leave it to chill. This method will leave you with chewy, dense fudge every time. As a bonus, if you're using chocolate pudding mix, its intense flavor will prevent you from having to go through the added hassle of melting chocolate chips, and throwing in some vanilla pudding mix will stop you from having to buy large quantities of expensive vanilla extract.

Brent Hofacker/Shutterstock

Part of the appeal of Caribbean-style rum cakes is that they're dense and chewy. Sometimes, though, that chewiness can be hard to come by. That's why we recommend stirring some instant pudding mix into your rum cakes. The pudding mix helps to bind all of your ingredients together, which keeps the batter nice and thick and produces a moist consistency for your finished cake. This density then allows the rum syrup to soak into the crumb without making the cake too waterlogged or causing it to disintegrate, thanks to the tightness of the cake batter.

Using vanilla pudding mix is also ideal on a taste level. The robust undertone of sweet vanilla flavor it provides works perfectly with the rum and is particularly good with spiced versions, which often have vanilla notes in them. Just make sure that you're using a pudding mix that has sugar in it, as this extra sugar is partly what gives the cake so much flavor. If you use a sugar-free version, or a mix artificial sweetener in it, your cake will end up tasting flat.

natalija_mysticcakes/Shutterstock

Cream puffs are a delicious, light-tasting treat to finish off a meal. Unless you're a cream pro, though, they can end up having somewhat of a bland flavor. The choux pastry that encloses the cream has very little sugar content in it, meaning that the majority of the sweetness has to come from the dairy itself — and it can be pretty easy to forget to add enough sugar to your cream mixture.

You won't have this problem with vanilla pudding mix, though. Adding vanilla pudding to your cream gives it an immediate hit of sweetness, with the vanilla notes rounding out its flavor. The pudding mix also acts as a stabilizer for the cream, ensuring that every cream puff remains plump and round. It's also a great choice if you're planning on making your cream mixture in advance, as using pudding mix means that it doesn't rely so much on being aerated to remain bouncy and thick. We would advise adding a little pudding mix at a time and taste-testing as you go, though. The joy of this dessert is in its palette-cleansing nature, and you don't want to overload your cream with powerful vanilla flavors. ‌

Liliboas/Getty Images

A homemade pumpkin pie is, for many, the best part of Thanksgiving. However, during a holiday, when oven space is at a premium, we'll take all the shortcuts we can get. Needless to say, we were stoked when we realized that you can use instant pudding mix to simultaneously improve pumpkin pie's flavor and prevent you from having to bake it at all. No-bake pudding mix pumpkin pies leave out the eggs that normally go in the pie filling, which become thick and slightly chewy when baked. Instead, a combination of vanilla pudding mix, Cool Whip, milk, and pumpkin puree provides that thickness, with the pudding mix's modified starch adhering everything together. To that mixture, you just need to add a touch of pumpkin spice and then spoon everything into a graham cracker crust before chilling.

It's worth pointing out that making a pumpkin pie this way will produce a slightly different texture to what you might be used to. Instead, the filling will be slightly more mousse-like. It also won't have the rich fattiness that the eggs normally give, but in its place will be a mellow scent of vanilla. What makes this recipe upgrade worth it, though, is the hours you get back.

Nemer-T/Shutterstock

Craving a lemon loaf but don't want to head out to your local Starbies to get it? All you need is some pudding mix. Lemon pudding mix is a quick and easy addition to lemon loaves that imbues them with immediate moisture and stops them from falling apart mid-bake. The pudding mix helps to cohere the dry and wet ingredients together, stopping the cake from being too crumby or mealy, and spikes it with a citrusy flavor, stopping you from having to find your Microplane to zest a lemon. This lemon flavor can be bulked up by the addition of lemon juice, and adding sour cream to your recipe can add extra astringency.

To keep things authentic, use yellow cake mix to give your loaf a luminous color. If you want to be bold with your flavors, you can also mix a spoonful of lemon pudding into your icing blend. Bear in mind that doing this might slightly overpower the flavor of the loaf itself and alter the consistency of the icing somewhat, so you may wish to just stick to a spritz of lemon juice for a touch of acidity.

Bhofack2/Getty Images

The best angel cake recipes understand contrast: When you combine the tender-as-air crumb with a thick, viscous filling, things get pretty heavenly. While you can make fillings from custard or whipped cream, they can often soak into the cake crumb or lose their structure over time. You're not at risk of this with a Boston Cream angel cake, though. Boston Cream angel cakes take only four ingredients — milk, vanilla pudding mix, angel cake, and a hot fudge ice cream topping — to make an easy dessert everyone will rave about.

The lightly creamy nature of the pudding filling and the gentle vanilla flavor pair seamlessly with the delicate angel cake. The filling also helps to keep the cake from falling apart, but its thickness prevents it from making the cake too wet or from dripping down its sides. The best part about this recipe is its versatility: Because the base flavors are relatively easygoing, you can add in pretty much any adornments of your choosing. Try mixing cinnamon or pumpkin spice into the pudding filling for a holiday-themed cake, or spike it with a dash of whisky or rum for additional depth and a boozy layer.

Liliya Kandrashevich/Shutterstock

Chocolate mousse is the work of mere moments, but there's no denying that it relies on eggs pretty heavily for its volume and flavor. For some people, this egg content can be just too rich, and the eggs can occasionally overpower every other flavor in the dish. Luckily, using chocolate pudding mix is an easy way to get rid of the eggs entirely and still produce a mousse that's fluffy and intensely flavored. Instead of using melted chocolate and eggs, you just use a pack of instant pudding mix, some heavy cream, and unsweetened cocoa powder.

The instant pudding mix here provides both sweetness and chocolate flavor, eliminating the need to add any extra sugar. The unsweetened cocoa powder, meanwhile, is key to stopping this mousse from becoming too sweet and gives it immediate complexity, bitterness, and depth. One thing to be aware of when using instant pudding mix is that pudding and mousse are similar but have very distinct textures. Pudding is thicker than mousse, and you don't just want to end up with a glorified bowl of the former. Therefore, it's super important to mix your mousse vigorously, using the medium-high setting on your mixer for at least a minute, to give it enough air.

Fcafotodigital/Getty Images

We're all in constant pursuit of fudgy, chewy brownies, but finding them is a little harder than it looks. Unless you time it perfectly, brownies can come out of the oven either overbaked, leaving the inside dry, or underdone, with the interior resembling chocolate syrup. Instant pudding mix is the key to solving both of these issues and intensifying the flavor of your brownies, giving them even more depth and chocolatey goodness. Instead of using plain flour and melted chocolate, you just have to combine chocolate pudding mix, chocolate cake mix, and semisweet chocolate chips.

The chocolate pudding mix provides immediate chocolate flavor and sweetness and stops you from having to spend time melting chocolate over a double-boiler and mixing it in for that same intensity. By using it with chocolate cake mix, you can essentially take all of the guesswork out of how chocolatey your brownies will be — you know you'll get a great taste every time. The pudding mix also gives the brownies a soft fudginess and a chewiness that's contributed to by the addition of semisweet chocolate chips. Using these ingredients also cuts down your cleanup time considerably, as you can prepare it all in one bowl.