Astronaut Chocolate Pudding

You might ask yourself, what has Astronaut Chocolate Pudding got to do with a cooking blog which focuses on campfire cooking and BBQ? Well, there is a good answer to this!

This July marks the 50^th anniversary of Apollo 11’s successful moon landing missions. Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two people on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle on July 20, 1969. Making this Astronaut’s Chocolate Pudding is a great activity for Cubs or Beaver Scouts!

There are a few ways I could link this to a Scouting Programme. Perhaps most obviously, you could complete this activity as part of a series of activities based on the “Air” Adventure Skills. It’s a link… but it’s not the best link. I think that the real value in this activity comes from when you get the children to think about why astronauts had to pack and carry food like this. If you pose this question, you will surely get answers such as.

• Dry ingredients weigh less
• It takes up less space
• It won’t go off
• You don’t need any special equipment
• No washing up
• No spilling (which can be dangerous on a spacecraft)

And when you start thinking along those lines, you start to realise the similarities between this Astronaut Chocolate Pudding and any other hiking or trekking dessert! That’s how I would use the moon landing anniversary as a stimulus to get children excited about an activity where they are practising preparing food for a hike.

If anyone gets smart and talks about how heavy water is, they’re technically right but simply smile and say that the astronaut’s make their own water…

How to serve your chocolate pudding

I’ve two thoughts on this. The most effective way is to make, store, prepare and eat your mix in a sealable sandwich bag. Fill it with the mix, add the water, close it up and squidge it all about. Then cut the corner off the bag and squeeze out the Astronaut Chocolate Pudding straight into your mouth. It’s easy, it’s fun and it sort of mimics what the astronauts would do. But you’ll end up with tonnes of plastic waste which I’m uncomfortable with. You could do this with one Cub Scout as a demo, choosing one child to be the dummy. Then let the rest mix their own in a cup or foil pouch which can be washed or recycled. The children will understand when you explain it’s for the good of the oceans!

Moonlight Walk

I know groups all around the country completed moonlit hikes to try to get the recently issued Moonlight Walk badge. It would be perfect if you could complete this activity, and then prepare your delicious Astronaut Chocolate Pudding to eat on your night hike under the moon!

It’s for Grown-Ups Too!

If you aren’t a Cub or Beaver Scout, don’t worry. This chocolate pudding is packed full of goodness and energy. You could even make it a tad more grown up with seeds or instant coffee. You could even swap the water for whiskey! I’m definitely going to be adding it to my rucksack for longer hikes!

Not just any Astronaut Chocolate Pudding, Almond Astronaut Chocolate Pudding!

When you look at these sorts of recipes online, they’re usually American and they use instant cake mix. These mixes are designed to be cooked. I try where possible to use real and whole ingredients so instead of a cake mix, I looked at making it from scratch. The problem is, cake mixes always contain flour. In the UK and Ireland, flour is just ground wheat. Straight from the field. It isn’t washed or bleached. That isn’t a problem when you’re cooking it but since this is a no cook recipe, there is a very small chance of it containing salmonella or E. coli. This is a chance that I might take on my own and you might take that chance too but it’s not a chance I would take on my readers or the young people in my care.

To get around this, I substituted the cake mix for real ingredients and used ground almonds, also known as almond flour. I think the nutty, sweet taste of the almonds actually works better and it adds a good dose of nutrients, protein and fats, perfect for hiking! Obviously this won’t work if you’ve a ground nut allergy in your group. Any flour would work in this, just check if it’s safe to be consumed raw.

For the cocoa powder, you’ve a choice to make too. You can use 100% cocoa powder which I prefer but it needs sweetened – this is the recipe I’ve written below. If you choose to use hot chocolate cocoa powder, it is already sweetened so leave out the sugar. The reason you might use drinking chocolate instead of the 100% cocoa powder is that you will be able to use the rest of the hot chocolate easily after.

We hope you enjoy this recipe, whether you are with a load of astronaut-helmet wearing children dreaming of being in space or maybe you’re on top of a mountain alone, literally a little bit closer to space itself.