Vanilla Pudding Parfaits with Chocolate and Salted Caramel Sauce

Circle B Kitchen

Even though I've specified the salted caramel sauce and chocolate sauce from Trader Joe's, you can certainly just use your favorites or what you have on hand. Also the samoa-like cookies could be substituted with any crisp sort of cookies that are sort of chocolate-y and caramel-y. I used some that are made by Keebler, but the classic Girl Scout cookies would be perfect.

Serves 4-6

For the Pudding:

2/3 cup sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 ½ cups milk

4 large egg yolks

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract (or more, if desired)

For Assembly:

Caramel sauce

Chocolate sauce

Crushed Samoa cookies

1. In a medium saucepan, off heat, whisk together sugar, cornstarch, and salt. Whisk in milk, taking care to dissolve cornstarch. Whisk in egg yolks.

2. Whisking constantly, cook over medium heat until the first large bubble forms and sputters. Reduce heat to low; still whisking, cook 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir the butter and vanilla into hot pudding.

3. Place about 3 tablespoons of the pudding in the bottom of each parfait glass. Drizzle that with some of the caramel sauce. Top the caramel sauce with more of the pudding and then a good drizzle of chocolate sauce. Top with the remaining pudding. Sprinkle the top of each parfait with about 3 tablespoons of the crushed cookies.

4. Refrigerate the parfaits for at least 2 hours before serving.