One Warming Addition Adds Flavorful Depth To Instant Vanilla Pudding

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With their individual serving glasses, parfait-style desserts inherently feel fancy. But "fancy" may be the last word foodies would use to describe boxed instant pudding mix. However, with the help of one pantry staple, instant pudding mix never looked (or tasted) so good. Enter: chai spice. Here at Tasting Table, we turn to chai spice for everything from leveling-up our baked goods to upgrading our Old Fashioned cocktails. And it can work just as well to give vanilla pudding a little more personality.

While exact ratios often vary from one blend to the next, chai spice customarily includes a warming bouquet of ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and coriander. This versatile spice has many uses in the kitchen, and it's the secret to elevated vanilla pudding desserts. The pudding's inherent sweetness helps balance the bold spices, while the complex chai flavor gives one-note instant pudding more depth without making it overly sweet.

To infuse instant vanilla pudding with chai, simply mix a generous sprinkle of chai spice into the dry mix, then prepare the pudding according to the package directions. Feel free to use as much or as little chai spice as desired to suit your taste. We found that roughly ½ teaspoon of chai spice per 3.5-ounce box of instant pudding mix provides a good balance. Any chai spice blend will work here, such as this masala blend by Spicewalla on Amazon.

To finish, garnish each serving of this creamy dessert with a crunchy topper for some added texture. Try sprinkling on crushed graham cracker crumbs, or stick a single graham cracker into the pudding. Alternatively, to lean into the masala flavors, swap that graham cracker for an Indian pistachio biscuit and a few slices of fresh banana. If you're feeling ambitious, you could even assemble this upgraded pudding as a layered parfait. Just spoon some crushed biscuit crumbs into the bottom of each serving glass, layer the vanilla chai pudding on top, and finish with another layer of crumbs. The result is a dinner party-worthy dessert that's deceptively simple to whip up.

Since you only need a small amount of chai spice, this pudding dessert is budget-friendly, too. At a Walmart in Chicago, a 3.4-ounce box of Jell-O French vanilla instant pudding mix (which makes four servings) currently costs just $1.63, though prices may vary by location.

Opting for instant pudding mix can also be a helpful time-saver when you're busy assembling other dishes for a larger dinner party spread. This shortcut could even work for our vanilla chai spice pudding with maple pecans recipe, which calls for making the pudding from scratch. To cut down on prep time, use chai-infused instant vanilla pudding as the base instead, then top it with the recipe's maple pecans.