Chia Pudding

My son, big world traveller that he is, requested chia pudding the other day.  This recipe from Minimalist Baker looks like it will hopefully work for him, but I think it could be tweaked to maybe work for folks like myself too, so.

I'm trying something new right now, which is to put in the original recipe, and then show how it can be altered.  This is honestly some really basic stuff that most cooks are going to know like the back of their hand. However, this is for those of us who are NOT cooks, or at least, cooks who are used to having recipes to use rather than having to come up with our own from scratch and trying to figure it all out.  So this may be too basic for some, but just remember, it's probably aimed at someone who is not as good at cooking as you are (yet, anyway). ^_^

Chia Pudding


The original recipe from Minimalist Baker :
Ingredients (in her words): 
1 1/2 cups dairy-free milk (we used DIY coconut - use creamier milks for creamier, thicker pudding, such as full fat coconut and cashew)
1/2 cup chia seeds
1-2 Tbsp maple syrup (more or less to taste)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions (in my words):
1.  Mix it all together in a bowl with a wisk.
2. Cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours. It should be, well, pudding, and if it's not, add more chia seeds in and refrigerate for another hour.
3. Serve alone, or with fruit or compote on it (mint, too) It will keep up to 5 days in the fridge.

Recipe alterations for those of us who have jack all for ingredients
Ingredients:
1 part chia seeds
3 parts creamy-ish liquid
a little bit of syrup/honey consistency sweetener to taste, if possible (notes below if not possible)
smidge of vanilla extract, if possible. Or any flowery extract (rosewater or orange blossom water, maybe?)

Directions - same as original recipe.


Notes for fiddling with the recipe if you don't have a lot of options.
For creamy liquids
- cow's milk - Not sure how it'd taste, but I imagine it would work.
- non-dairy milks, like the original recipe.  Oat milk, rice milk, almond milk, drinking coconut milk, cashew milk, pecan milk, soy milk. Most, if not all, non-dairy milks can be made from scratch for folks who can't tolerate store bought ones. (I have one for rice milk, for example) If you can add some fats into the homemade milk, it would probably make the chia pudding a bit creamier.
- coconut milk - not to drink, but just the typical coconut milk to be used for recipes, so very thick and creamy
- cashew cream - if you make your own from cashews and water, but thinned it out a bit so there is enough liquid for chia to soak up, this is probably fairly nice.

For sweetening:
- If you don't have any sweetener, can you have any juices? If so, replace a few TB of the creamy liquid for the pudding with the juice and check out if it meshes well.
- If you have no juices, do you have any fruits you can use? Especially apple, pear, grape?  The first three can be either blended up and added as sweetener or juiced and the juice used as is or reduced by boiling and added as sweetener.
- Can you use dates?  There are recipes online that are pretty easy to find for simple, raw date juice/syrup that you could use
- For all of these, I'd try the flavor first with already made, unsweetened pudding. I put the pudding in parts because it's easy to make a super small batch to test this out on - like 1 Tb of pudding for 3 Tb liquid, you know? Then you potentially adjust the liquid content of the original recipe to compensate for the extra liquid you are adding for the sweetener in the next batch. 


Notes on how it turns out.
10/22/19 - making this for my son, we leave out the sweetener so he can add some himself, depending on his mood when he eats the pudding. Wish I could tell you the taste, but I react to store-bought chia seeds and have yet to grow enough to be worth making pudding out of, so this recipe is only for my own kids. It was just so simple and easy to alter, however, that I thought it would be worth passing along. ^_^


Allergens (I'm not the expert, but a few words of advice I do know):
- Obviously, if using non-dairy milk, this can be vegan.
- To keep it sulfite free, avoid the coconut milks (they are nearly impossible to find without sulfites somewhere in the process, even if the levels are low enough to not have to be labeled - coconut oxidizes to a gray color without sulfites to keep it white).
- For gluten free, just make sure any of the non-dairy milk is labeled gluten free, or use gluten free grains/nuts/seeds to make it yourself.