Chocolate pudding mix substitutes

This is the single most useful swap on the page, because instant mix contains modified food starch that thickens in cold milk with no heat. No pantry ingredient replicates that, so if you need cold-set behaviour you need instant mix of some flavour.

Best for

poke cakes, dump cakes, no-bake pies, cookie dough, cold puddings, frosting

Sets exactly like chocolate instant mix. The colour is slightly lighter and the flavour slightly less sweet and more cocoa-forward, which most people prefer. Sift the cocoa in and whisk the dry powders together before the milk goes in, or you will get cocoa lumps.

Pudding mix is doing three things: sweetening, adding cocoa flavour, and thickening with starch. Cornstarch cooked with milk does the thickening properly, and the result tastes considerably better than any box.

Best for

pudding cups, pie filling, trifle, layered desserts, eclair cake

Richer, less sweet and glossier than boxed pudding, with a real cocoa flavour instead of a faint one. It must come to a full boil for at least a minute or the cornstarch will not reach full thickening power and the pudding stays loose. It also needs several hours in the fridge to fully set, so it is not a last-minute option.

The same flavour with ordinary starch instead of modified starch, so it sets by cooking rather than by standing.

Best for

pudding to eat, pie filling, layered desserts, baked cakes

Prepared and cooled, it substitutes straight across for prepared instant pudding, and it is slightly firmer and smoother. The trap is recipes that stir dry mix into a batter or into cold cream. In a cake that then goes in the oven, cook-and-serve powder is fine because the oven does the cooking. In a no-bake pie or a cold whipped filling it never sets, and you get chocolate soup.

For the many cake recipes that stir a box of dry pudding mix into the batter to keep it moist, this blend does the same work: starch for tenderness, sugar and cocoa for flavour.

Best for

bundt cakes, dump cakes, baked cakes, cookies, muffins

Only for things that get baked. It will not thicken cold milk on its own no matter how long you wait, because plain cornstarch needs heat to swell. Cakes made this way come out very slightly less soft than with boxed mix, since commercial mixes carry emulsifiers as well as starch.

A quick chocolate mousse. It is a filling rather than a pudding, thickened by aerated fat instead of starch.

Best for

cake fillings, parfaits, no-bake pie filling, trifle

Much richer and much lighter at the same time, with a mousse-like airiness rather than pudding's dense spoonable body. It is far less stable, so it weeps if it sits for more than a day and it will not hold up as a poke cake filling soaking into sponge. Let the chocolate cool to barely warm or it will deflate the cream.

Instant pudding sets cold because of pre-gelatinized modified food starch, a specifically engineered ingredient. Cocoa, cornstarch, flour and gelatin all fail to reproduce it without heat or setting time.

Best for

knowing when to change plans

The least-bad options are instant vanilla mix plus cocoa, which works well, or making the cooked cornstarch pudding above and chilling it for four hours before you assemble, which works but requires patience. Do not try plain cornstarch stirred into cold milk; it will taste raw and chalky and stay liquid.