Pudding Birthday

I woke up the morning of my twenty-sixth birthday to find that I had lost my distaste for housework. I then proceeded to spend the day sweeping the floors, cleaning the bathroom, cooking dinner for ten people, and enjoying every minute of it. (Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration.)

Our dinner party was a success. We expected eight guests, got eleven, and have five chairs and dinnerware for six. But we really enjoyed everyone’s company, and the central event of the evening went over fabulously. This wasn’t just a dinner party. It was a pudding taste-testing party. That afternoon, Josh and I went out and bought a stack of packs of various single-serve puddings (and a bottle of champagne. And the guy at the checkout didn’t bat an eye.). Here’s the list:
-Bonne Maman milk chocolate
-La Laiterie cherry clafoutis
-La Laiterie petit pots creme caramel
-Dannone praline
-Store brand panna cotta with forest fruits (mixed berries)
-Store brand ile flottante
-Store brand peach-mango mousse

After a dinner we set up a pudding table and everyone tasted as many of the different puddings as they could stomach. There were a number of favorites, with the most votes going to the La Laiterie creme caramel (which was rich and smooth and tasted exactly like those little square caramels you melt to make caramel apples) and votes for texture going to the ile flottante, which tastes like a giant fluffy marshmallow floating in caramel and vanilla pudding. The peach-mango mousse, which was composed of 50% fruit and was fat free, was thrown out.