Chocolate Pudding

When I'm busy making macarons and saving the world, Bob gets to feast on boxed pudding.

Hmmmm…. pudding.  It is so good, non?  Love it as a snack for work and sometimes as a sweet treat after dinner.   When I get a chance, I do make it from scratch with the milk, the cream, the chocolate and the corn starch.  But lately, I’ve been buying the Hunt’s Snack Packs for my Bob because i) he likes them and ii) I simply haven’t made much time or effort to make homemade pudding for him.  Horrible wife – YIKES!

I stumbled upon this Dairy Free Chocolate Pudding when I was looking for recipes with chia seeds.  I’ve tried making it twice because I actually wasn’t all that fond of the original.

For the first time I made this:

• I didn’t have enough bananas, I had about 1 generous cup of bananas on hand.
• My blender made it difficult to blend the bananas and the coconut milk so I ended up using more coconut milk than I would have liked leaving a strange after taste.  But more than likely, it’s just my tastebuds.
• I had chopped up some semi-sweet chocolate and some of it got on the bananas.  After mixing the bananas and coconut milk together, I could actually still see the chocolate and upon further inspection, found it still quite solid.  It simply wasn’t blending all that well; I subsequently substituted with cocoa powder.

I liked how the pudding was non-dairy and vegan.  I didn’t like this strange taste that I was getting which I can only assume was from the coconut milk.  Bob and I both found it gritty because of the chia seeds; between the two of us I wasn’t turned off by it.

This is my modified version of this chocolate pudding:

Organic bananas from Peru. Hmm... carbon foot print?

1 cup sliced bananas (because it’s all I have again!)*
1/4 cup almond milk
1/2 cup chia gel
1/4 cup ground almonds
3 tbsps cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla extract (actually I just pour in as much as I like)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp agave nectar

The second time around, I used an immersion blender to mix the bananas and almond milk together.  (Because an immersion blender is so much easier to use, you probably could omit the almond milk).  Once it looks well blended, add in the ground almond, cocoa powder, cinnamon, sea salt, vanilla, and agave nectar.  Mix until all the lumpies are gone.

Finally add in your chia gel.  Now, I probably should have only added a 1/4 cup because Bob doesn’t like the grittyness, but I ended up using the 1/2 cup again.  Blend until you get a nice “smooth” texture.

The second time around has a much richer colour, better on my tastebuds but still quite gritty.  I also found it slightly salty.  (The first time around I just put a bit of salt, not measuring.)  I suppose you could strain it before pouring into containers or simply use less chia gel.  *But, I think if using almond milk, 2 cups of bananas would work better.  It’s not quite runny, but it’s not as thick as I’d like it to be.

Kind of a boring, straight-forward post.  But my brain is somewhat adled today by lack of sleep.  I didn’t realize how much I tossed and turned at night.  I woke up in a panic thinking my sheets were strangling me.  Paranoid Android…

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