It's actually even tastier than it looks. [Photographs: Liz Gutman]

I was a deprived child. My parents were always putting weird stuff in our lunch boxes: cheese sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, plastic Ziploc bags full of pretzel twists. Store-brand cookies, for God's sake! Where were our Lunchables? Or individual cartons of chocolate milk? And the crinkly foil bags of neon-orange cheese puffs? I spent a lot of time in elementary school trying to cajole friends into swapping with me. Unfortunately few nine-year-olds actually like Vegemite sandwiches, go figure.

In hindsight, of course, I'm grateful to my parents for packing healthy, less processed foods. But, to this day, I have a sick fascination with junk food—convenience desserts in particular. Enter the Snack Pack.

There are few things in this world more comforting to me than squishy, sweet, creamy desserts, especially when they come in a ready-to-eat cup. But pudding is really easy to make at home, too.

So when I got hit with a serious pudding jones recently, I spent a few days vacillating over which recipe to use. Did I want a non-egg recipe? Chocolate or vanilla? Or maybe butterscotch?

Eventually I decided to hybridize a Martha Stewart recipe using both dark and milk chocolate puddings—which then, of course, gets layered into cute little containers. The container cuteness is optional; and of course you can gussy this up with any kind of extract, liqueur, or spice. But I highly recommend trying it straight-up at least once.

I call it Le Snaque-Paque. If you bring a little glass jar of this magical stuff into work, everyone will be begging you to trade. Promise.