Enjoy Roald Dahl’s famous Kit Kat pudding recipe
“Never mind about 1066 William the Conqueror… Such things are not going to affect one’s life. But 1932 the Mars Bar and 1936 Maltesers, and 1937 the Kit Kat—these dates are milestones in history and should be seared into the mind of every child in the country.”—Roald Dahl
Food played a central role in Roald Dahl’s life and work. Anyone who’s read 1984’s Boy autobiography will know just how much of a presence his love of treats and confectionery commands in his childhood recollections, depicting the local sweet shop in South Wales’ Llandaff with an almost Emerald City glow of beckoning magic. Most foundational would be the free samples of Cadbury chocolate bars handed out while a pupil at Repton School, planting the seeds of one of his most beloved pieces.
1964’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory sees Dahl indulge in his imaginative sweet tooth with the most sugary cheer. Willy Wonka’s factory has everything: Rivers of chocolate, everlasting gobstoppers, cavity-filling caramels, and rainbow drops—the kaleidoscopic candy that creates six different coloured spits.
Such veneration of sweets isn’t without a macabre warning of gluttony, however, with Augustus Gloop’s eager consumption of the chocolate river resulting in his being sucked into the pipe works, and chewing gum champion Violet Beauregard inflating to the size of a giant blueberry after chewing the berry pie pudding gum, untested for human consumption.
Dahl never seemed to heed the lessons he’d meted out on his own characters. Despite his comic admonishments of greed, Dahl had devoured so many of his beloved Kit Kat bars that he fashioned his own cannonball-sized paper weight formed from hundreds of wrappers of his favourite chocolate wafer snack. His love for Kit Kats even inspired his own cake recipe. Like a punishment pudding Matilda’s Miss Trunchbull forces Bruce Bogtrotter to shove down his gullet, Dahl’s Kit Kat cake was a simple but “most filthy thing”, according to his wife Felicity.
Roald Dahl’s Kit Kat pudding recipe
Ingredients:
- Kit Kats (as many as you can muster)
- Whipped cream
Instructions:
“The original recipe is, appropriately, simple enough for a child to make,” writes Ayun Halliday. “Stack as many Kit Kats as you like into a tower, using whipped cream for mortar, then shove the entire thing into the freezer, and leave it there until solid.”
Done. There’s room for flair if you’re feeling creative; Paper and Salt’s Nicole Villeneuve upped the game by adding bittersweet chocolate ganache and swapping Kit Kats for high-class wafer cookies, but Dahl’s “filthy” thing’s possibilities are endless. Enjoy!
