Vegan Pudding

For a Wiess cooking class, I needed a vegan alternative to the banana pudding the other students were making. The original recipe on One Lovely Life is probably the best chocolate pudding vegans will ever taste.

Here are my lemon and chocolate versions. The chocolate one was delicious with fresh strawberries, according to the vegan in my class. I used the lemon version for the trifle, but if I make it again, I’ll use the chocolate one. The lemon doesn’t mask the almond and coconut flavors of the milk.

  • 3-1/2 cups Silk Almond & Coconut Milk
  • 3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder for chocolate version
  • 4 Tablespoons corn starch
  • 1/3 cup coconut sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 2/3 cup dairy free mini chocolate chips for chocolate version
  • 1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice for lemon version
  • 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon zest for lemon version
  • 1 Tablespoon Vegan Buttery Spread for lemon version

Sift the corn starch, cocoa powder, and sugar together in a 4-cup bowl.

Place the milk in a 3-quart saucepan on medium heat.

Pour 1/4 cup of the warming milk into the dry ingredients and stir to make a very thick paste. Continue adding and stirring in 1/4 cup of warming milk to the paste to thin. This is how you incorporate the corn starch into a liquid to avoid lumps.

Once you have the consistency of a grainy chocolate milk in the bowl, add all of it to the pot and stir to combine.

Increase the heat to medium high (7 or 8 on a scale of 0-10) and stir frequently to keep the sugar and cornstarch from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  Continue cooking on medium high for about 10 minutes. At the very end, the pudding will thicken quickly, but it does feel like nothing is happening for the first 7-8 minutes.

Chocolate: Remove thickened pudding from heat and stir in vanilla and chocolate chips. Continue stirring to melt the chips and mix thoroughly.

Lemon: Add the lemon juice and lemon zest to the pot and keep stirring over medium high heat. The pudding will bubble up and thin out a bit. Keep cooking 2 more minutes to thicken.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla and 1 Tablespoon Vegan Buttery Spread.

Pour into a serving dishes or a single container, then chill before serving or making the trifle.

Trifle

 

Layer chilled pudding with fruit like bananas, cherries, oranges, and raspberries. To add an interesting crunch, separate the fruit from the pudding layers with a thin layer of gluten-free cereal like Nature’s Path Sunrise Crunchy Maple.