Thursday, September 19, 2013

Chia Chocolate Pudding – Sort of a Pet Project

If you’re my age, you can’t hear the word “chia” without thinking of the famous 1980’s commercial, and its “cha cha cha chia” jingle. That did make it a little tougher taking this seed seriously as a legitimate recipe ingredient, but as long as you manage expectations, it proved its worth beyond a gardening option for lazy people.

If you’re looking for a rich and decadent chocolate pudding then keep moving. As nutritious as this “superfood” is supposed to be, you can’t expect the same results substituting bird seeds for eggs, butter, and cream. That said, if you’re craving something sweet, relatively chocolately, and comparatively healthful, then chia seeds may be a good option.

Chia seeds are all the rage right now, and are usually seen in breakfast pudding form. In fact, I learned about them after seeing this on my friend Elizabeth’s blog, Saffron Lane. I’ve never been a big breakfast pudding guy, so I decide to do a dessert for my first attempt. Plus, I needed an excuse to use chocolate covered hemp seeds.

They're incredible easy to work with, and I look forward to doing more experiments. If you have any tips or tricks I should know about, please feel free to pop off. And if you’ve never tried using chia seeds before (the pet plant doesn’t count), I hope you give this a try soon. Enjoy!


Ingredients for 2 servings:
1/4 cup chia seeds
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon white sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee
1/4 tsp vanilla
a few grains of salt
1 cup milk
chocolate covered hemp seeds, optional

26 comments:

paytonelizbeth said...

i can't wait to try this, i'm probably going to test the coconut or almond milk. you should do a superfood series of recipes. try lemon chia seed muffins!

Rosa said...

I'm so going to try this!

The hippie-dippy food co-op where I do all my shopping sells packaged 1/2 cup servings of chia pudding for $2.99. This looks so much better--and much less expensive probably.

Ed the house chef said...

I want to watch it grow into a loveable pudding pet.

Ed the house chef said...

And another thing, I never had a Chia pet as a kid and I've had to live with that. :)

Isabelle said...

I love that you post this as I just bought a giant 2lb bag of chia seeds from Amazon. I have done it before with the coconut milk and honey and it's super tasty so I will completely try this (got to do something with those 2lbs!)

mattjeast said...

In case anybody was wondering how healthy the healthy chia pudding is, here are the macros per serving (because I was curious):

Calories: 238
Carbs: 31g
Fat: 9g
Protein: 11g

You could shave an additional 20 calories off by using skim milk or 50 calories off by using unsweetened almond milk in place of the 2% milk, but I'd be willing to bet that would affect the final consistency. Also, almond milk would probably lack a majority of the sweetness. Overall, it's not exactly low-calorie (just eat a Snack Pack if you want a 100 calorie pudding snack), but you do reap the added benefits of heart health, fiber, and protein with the chia!

viva said...

I make chia chocolate pudding using ground chia seeds (I grind them in a poppy seed mill). The ground chia still thicken the chocolate liquid, but you end up with a finer texture that is more pudding-like.

Unknown said...

Do you think throwing it in a blender would be a good idea? It could potentially have a much nicer texture, or it could just turn out really gummy and disgusting. No idea.

Unknown said...

Regarding the crunch.. hmmm, maybe boil the seeds for a quick 5 minutes or would they soak up too much water for this to work?

Karen said...

I've been looking for the best proportions of chia seed to liquid for a while, so I'm glad to have this recipe. Also, it's worth noting that pretty much all of the grams of carbs in chia seeds are fibre and I'm pretty sure that means that the net carbs are essentially zero. So regardless of the number of calories, this is a fairly low-carb treat (and carbs, not calories, are what I'm counting these days.) Thanks, Chef!

Unknown said...

Thanks, Chef John, that actually looks good, like a chocolate tapioca pudding.

Stefan said...

For those who may be curious: the recipe is fantastic w dark rum.

Brandy said...

We make chia pudding all the time, we are not hippies lol, but we do eat LO carb, and use maple syrup as a sweetener, obviously this pudding is a treat :) but I usually stir in some fresh berries after it has sat over night, raspberries are my favorite! We also use coconut milk or almond milk instead of 2% milk, and I whip up the the coconut cream from the top of the can with a bit of vanilla and a drizzle of honey for a yummy whipped cream topping! We have also done a Mexican chocolate pudding type deal with cayenne pepper stirred in and a touch of cinnamon! Yum! Yum! Yum!

Brandy said...

We make chia pudding all the time, we are not hippies lol, but we do eat LO carb, and use maple syrup as a sweetener, obviously this pudding is a treat :) but I usually stir in some fresh berries after it has sat over night, raspberries are my favorite! We also use coconut milk or almond milk instead of 2% milk, and I whip up the the coconut cream from the top of the can with a bit of vanilla and a drizzle of honey for a yummy whipped cream topping! We have also done a Mexican chocolate pudding type deal with cayenne pepper stirred in and a touch of cinnamon! Yum! Yum! Yum! Also Kurt Brecht, we have thrown our pudding in the vitamix, berries liquid, sweetener, cocoa and vanilla, and it works out great, thickens up a lot quicker too ;)

Rosa said...

Well, just to follow up, I did make this ch-ch-ch-chia pudding. I increased the milk to 1 1/4 cup, added an extra 1 1/2 T. sugar (white only because I didn't have brown), left out the vanilla (hate vanilla), and refrigerated it for 24 hours. (In other words, I followed the recipe to the letter.) Served it with mixed fresh fruit and it was awesome!

I can't wait to try it with coconut milk, palm sugar, and maybe even with some shredded coconut mixed in and sliced mango on the side...YUM!

Las recetas de Tere said...

Yummmy, I love this Chocolate Pudding!!!
Regards from Spain!!

Leia Meyers said...

Hey, Chef John! Just wanted to thank you for this wonderful recipe. I have an ear infection right now, started last Friday--I think perhaps the day the video posted on YouTube? Anyway, my ear hurt so much that I had trouble chewing, so I wanted to eat some soft food, so when I picked up my prescriptions I also picked up the ingredients to make this.

I used a very good cocoa powder--Ghirardelli--and whole milk, skipped the vanilla because I forgot it, but not the instant coffee... And it was amazing. I've eaten it every day for the last three days while I'm slowly recovering from this very painful infection, and it's been very comforting and delicious, even when I didn't feel like eating at all. Sure, pudding, even Chia pudding, is not exactly health food, but this was so good and filling and wonderful and helpful, I just had to let you know how much I loved it and how very serendipitous your timing was.

This is now the second recipe I've made of yours, though I've subscribed to your channel and watch every new upload. Last year I was cast as the baker woman in a stage performance of The Little Princess, and I used your Rosemary Honey Pull Apart Bun recipe for my props--modified slightly so they were not pull apart, but separate. I made them fresh many times, for dress rehearsal week and then two weekends of performance, and I got pretty good and making them, haha. I'm only sad that the little girl who played the little princess was gluten-intolerant and couldn't eat them! But my little sister, who played the urchin girl, certainly could.

So again, thanks. I love your videos and your recipes, and I hope to make many more of them in the future.

Chef John said...

get well! thanks!

grumbleghoul said...

Hey Chef,
We gave this a shot, but ours didn't turn out as thick looking as yours did. The texture was...different. Not bad..but different. My kids tried it, and my six year old son asked his big sister if she liked it. She said no, then my son said, "I think they do this to laugh at us" That, to me, was worth the whole experiment! I enjoyed it enough to try again, but I will have to find a way to sweeten it just a little bit. And as always, THANK YOU for what you do!

KVS said...

I don't like the texture of things like chia or tapioca puddings but as an FYI, I ran across a blog recipe that reiterated what a commenter here stated about using ground chia seeds. They ground the chia seeds first in a completely dry blender until they were a powder. Then added the other ingredients (incl 2 tbsp maple syrup as opposed to brown sugar) and blended until smooth. Still set and thickened when refrigerated and had the bonus of resulting in a silky smooth consistency much more in line with traditional chocolate pudding.

Agnieszka said...

Made it and Love it ! this weekend I'll make some for desert for my friend when she'll
come over :)

Unknown said...

Hilarious post!

Unknown said...

I love chia seeds and I love chocolate. Going to give this one a go considering it contains both ingredients I love....thanks for the recipe

Doxie57 said...

I made this with coconut milk.. OMG! It is so good!!

Jolene said...

John, I recently decided to add peanut butter to this base recipe and chose to heat up the peanut butter in a pot to improve the mix-ability....I added the milk in and got that nice and steamy....and we know cocoa likes warm/hot liquids better than cold...so that went in, too....I just did this for convenience because I wanted that PB in there...and the end result of heating it up? Amazingly thick pudding. Beyond what I could ever achieve done cold. Today I made it again but without the peanut butter...just simply heating up the milk and mixing everything warm/hot. Same result....amazingly thick pudding!

CG said...

More chia recipes, please! :)