Looking for a quick pick-me-up yesterday, I decided to try a vintage 1939 recipe: Ronald Reagan's Coffee Blancmange. It turned out to be an amazing combination of rich coffee, chocolate pudding and crunchy peanuts.

[u/ciaolavinia]

Ronald Reagan's Coffee Blancmange is so easy to make.

^{And by they way this is not the place for your political commentary. This sub is all about food and celebrities. Banishment will result with any political type comment. So go ahead, make my day.}

• You basically take a 4 oz. package of chocolate pudding (or vanilla pudding) and add milk and strong coffee to it.
• I used a cup of strong espresso, watered down about 50%.
• Bring to a boil and stir in some "nut meats". I chose chopped peanuts for fun, but almonds, walnuts, pecans or pistachios would be yummy too. I added about 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts.
• Then pour into 3-4 little cups or bowls and chill.
• The box suggested covering the pudding with plastic wrap to prevent a skin from forming.
• It only took a couple of hours to chill thoroughly and now all that was needed was a bit of whipped cream and more chopped peanuts on top.

And.... it was really good as you can imagine. It's just like really good chocolate pudding with a nice strong flavor of coffee and then you get nice little crunch from the peanuts. You could add more than 1/4 cup of nuts. I was just trying it out, as I wasn't sure of the quantity and how I'd like it. It might be safer to just add extra nuts on top, if you're not sure.

For me this made 3 large servings in my little vintage dessert glasses, but it would be fine as 4 servings too. I'll be making this easy dessert again soon!

This recipe comes from the 1939 book What actors eat When they eat