Amish Vanilla Cornstarch Pudding Recipe - Amish Heritage (2024)

We always had plenty of cream too, so we could have made ice cream as well. But ice cream takes longer to make, and it is best served as soon as it is finished churning.

We did make homemade ice cream frequently too, but more often it was for a delicious family treat after a long day of work.

Amish homemade vanilla pudding, however, can be made a day or two in advance. And when serving guests, it is a great addition to your dessert table.

Creamy Homemade Pudding for Sunday Dinner

Our church had Sunday School every other Sunday. On our church Sunday everyone stayed for lunch, and we always had the same type of meal.

But after Sunday School the hosts usually invited the youth group and only a few close friends to stay for lunch. And we had a big cooked meal of meat and potatoes, etc.

Friends that were invited to stay often offered to bring a cake or some other dessert along for the meal. And a lot of times we had cake (such as chocolate cake or oatmeal cake), old-fashioned cornstarch pudding, and fruit salad for dessert.

Homemade Vanilla Pudding From Scratch

You can also make this cornstarch pudding to use in other recipes. A lot of delicious desserts ask for instant pudding, which is so quick and easy to make.

But what if you wanted to make something and you didn't have instant pudding in your pantry? You can make your own pudding to use.

This vintage cornstarch pudding also tastes so much better than instant pudding which is a good reason to use homemade pudding rather than instant pudding.

Our youth group ate a lot of meals together, and sometimes one person would plan the meal and ask everyone to bring a dish. One dessert we had a lot was homemade éclair cake. It has several layers of pudding with graham crackers.

Sometimes we had several dishes of the same dessert made by different people. And one family always used homemade pudding for their éclair instead of instant pudding. Guess which dish always got empty first? You guessed it, everyone liked the one with the homemade pudding the best.

Easy Cornstarch Pudding Recipe

This homemade pudding recipe uses whole eggs, so there is no need to separate the whites. And it is seriously so easy to make.

Pour one gallon of milk into a large pot, and sprinkle sugar and salt on top. Do not stir.

Place on the stovetop over medium-low heat until it comes to a boil. This may take about twenty to twenty-five minutes. But DO NOT stir the milk until it's at the boiling point.

It won't burn if you sprinkle the sugar on top and don't stir.

Meanwhile, whisk your eggs and cornstarch, add 1 cup of milk, and whisk until creamy.

Mix the gelatin with cold water and set it aside.

When your milk starts getting hot, you want to keep your eye on it. Boiling milk will rise and run over, making a huge mess. You want to catch your milk when it is just starting to rise, so you know it is at the boiling point.

When your milk begins to rise, turn off the burner and slowly pour in the cornstarch/egg mixture, whisking as you are pouring.

Then take your pot off of the burner and add the gelatin mixture, butter, and vanilla, whisking until the gelatin is melted and your pudding is creamy-looking.

Set the pudding aside to cool.

Skin on Top of the Pudding

As pudding cools, it develops a skin on the top.

Pudding skin is simply milk protein that’s dried out due to evaporation. It forms a thin, rubbery layer on top of your dessert. If it happens, just scrape it off with the edge of a spoon and eat it before stirring again (shh.. don't tell anyone that I like to do this 🙂 because it's so yummy! lol).

To avoid having a skin form on the top of the pudding, you can cover your hot pudding with plastic wrap. Let the wrap sit against the top of the pudding as it cools, and it shouldn't develop skin.

Once your pudding is chilled, feel free to add Cool Whip or homemade whipped cream to make it lusciously creamy. And you can serve it with extra whipped cream on the top as well.

The Best Homemade Pudding

Old-fashioned cornstarch pudding is so delicious served with cake, pie, cookies, graham crackers, etc., or used in recipes.

This recipe makes a big pot of Amish vanilla cornstarch pudding. However, you can halve the recipe if you don't want a big batch.

And if you get to try this easy pudding recipe, I'd love it if you left a comment and star rating below. Thank you!

More Amish Pudding Recipes

Strawberry Tapioca Pudding

Vanilla Pearl Tapioca Pudding

Graham Cracker Pudding

More Amish Recipes

Vanilla Crumb Pie

Flaky Amish pie crust

Amish wet-bottom shoofly pie recipe

Shoofly cake recipe

Items you may need:

11-Inch Balloon Whisk

Pyrex (32 Oz) Measuring 4 Cup Glass, Clear

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