chia pudding!

I love chia pudding. I don’t know why. It doesn’t seem like something anyone would like. When I take it to work (in a mason jar!), I get a lot of strange looks and questions about wth I am eating…

Last week, I made a lemon chia pudding I found on findingvegan.com. No offense to the recipe creator, but this was the most disgusting chia pudding I’ve ever had. I only made two deviations from the recipe, I used hemp milk instead of rice milk, and I didn’t have mandarin oranges, so I used a Valencia orange. Oh, and I added an extra tbsp of chia seeds because it was very thin, even after sitting overnight. It tasted very bitter and not good. I’m not sure if my lemon was just super tart, or what, but it tasted like eating a lemon peel.

So, making a good chia pudding can be hard. I’ve also tried the chia pods they sell now at the grocery store, and it’s a little too stiff and thick. And the mango flavor, yucky! So I have been trying to come up with my own perfect recipe. I’ve experimented with different kinds of non-dairy milk, the right ratio of liquid to seeds, etc. Turns out that the ratio is different depending on the kind of non-dairy milk!

This is a hard task, and I don’t think I’ve made it perfect yet, but I wanted to share this one with you.

Cinnamon & Coconut Chia Pudding

INGREDIENTS

• 3/4 c unsweetened vanilla hemp milk (because all non-dairy milk should be vanilla unless you are making something savory 🙂 )
• 3 tsbp chia seeds
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tbsp unsweetened coconut flakes 

Mix the hemp milk, chia seeds and cinnamon. Let sit overnight. Then add the coconut (you can add to taste, same with the cinnamon) and enjoy!

I added the coconut after letting it sit for just about 10 minutes, I don’t really know why. I’m not sure if it matters, but if you want the coconut to stay firm, I would recommend adding it just before eating.

You can add a touch of maple syrup or agave if you want something a little sweeter. You can also use sweetened non-dairy milk or coconut as well. My is “no sugar added” as I’m trying to cut down on sugar…….. ay yi yi, if you know me, you know how hard that is going to be!

If you have a great chia pudding recipe, please share it with me!