Strawberry Chia Pudding
This strawberry chia pudding is a delicious breakfast that will blow your mind. It is super tasty and easy to make, but also really nutritious and healthy.
Chia seed pudding with fresh strawberries that I’ll show you in this simple recipe is naturally gluten-free, vegan, and paleo-friendly. Plus, it looks amazing so it can even be served as a dessert.
Ingredients for the strawberry chia pudding
You will need only a couple of simple, natural ingredients to make this delicious strawberry chia pudding:
- chia seeds
- strawberries
- oat milk or other plant milk
- naturally fermented soy yoghurt
- lemon
- date syrup or maple syrup
Although I love to make this chia pudding with fresh strawberries when they are in season, it won’t be a mistake if you use frozen ones. I’ve made it with frozen fruits on several occasions and it tasted just as good.
Strawberries are my number one fruit of choice for making this kind of chia pudding. Not only are they good for health, full of vitamin C, antioxidants and many other goodies, but they are also super delicious in this kind of creamy combination.
The combination of soy yoghurt and plant milk will give you a really creamy chia pudding. My go-to for this recipe is a thick, naturally fermented soy yoghurt. If you don’t consume soy, you can go with a thick, full-fat coconut yoghurt.
Other plant yoghurts are usually either just not that level of creaminess that we are going for here, or full of additives (both options are a no for me).
As for the choice of plant milk, homemade is always my first choice – one of my favourites being this homemade hemp and almond milk – but I also don’t mind a plain and simple store bought organic oat milk without additives.
For a fully paleo-friendly version of this strawberry chia pudding, you can replace the maple (or date) syrup with a few dates and a few tablespoons of water. The reason why I prefer using date or maple syrup as a sweetener in this recipe is that it makes the pudding smoother and keeps it more pink (yes, I like the food to look nice as well).
Chia seeds 101
The main ingredient of this strawberry chia pudding are, of course, the chia seeds. These tiny seeds are packed with nutrition – they contain a lot of protein, good fats and certain minerals, and are also high in fibre.
Speaking of fibre – chia seeds can absorb a lot of water, more than ten times their weight. This happens because they contain high amounts of soluble fibre, which dissolves in water and gets a gelatinous consistency.
This is one of the reasons why chia seeds need to be soaked before being consumed if you’d like your body to see them as food (as confusing as it is to see some healthy food bars serve granolas sprinkled with dry chia seeds).
To soak up the liquid (in our case this will be the milky strawberry mixture) and form a gel, chia seeds will need to stay in that liquid for at least twenty minutes. If you constantly stir them with a whisk, you can speed up this process.
Nonetheless – the longer you can soak them, the better. I like to soak chia seeds for an hour or two at the room temperature, giving them an occasional stir with a whisk. After that I leave them in the fridge overnight.
I already wrote an article about the reasons for sprouting and soaking seeds, and the same logic can be applied here; with an additional factor that it is simply better to let chia seeds absorb all that water before they get into your digestive system (if you’d prefer your digestion to work normally, anyway).
Chia to water ratio
A general guideline for making a thick chia pudding is to use a 1:4 ratio of chia seeds to water. That means that you will use ¼ cup chia seeds per cup of liquid to get a nice pudding consistency. I personally like to use a bit less chia seeds (about 3 tbsp), to make it more liquidy.
Strawberry chia pudding combinations
The strawberry chia pudding from this recipe will taste amazing on its own, or with some fresh strawberries and other seasonal fruits on top. It also combines well with other simple creamy sweets, such as
- this delicious creamy millet pudding – when I’m filling the glasses or glass jars, I fill them approximately ¼ with millet cream, and ¾ with strawberry chia pudding. Then I’ll top it with some fresh strawberries and chill the dessert jars in the fridge.
- I also love to combine this strawberry chia pudding with the roasted almond cream from this white wine poached pears recipe. I do it the same way – a thinner layer of cream on the bottom of the glass, plus chia pudding and fruits on top. With this combination, I love the contrast of the rich and extra smooth almond cream with light and fruity chia pudding.
More chia seed recipes:
Strawberry Chia Pudding
This strawberry chia pudding is super tasty and easy to make. It is also really nutritious, so it can be a perfect breakfast or a healthy dessert.
Ingredients
- ½ cup chopped strawberries
- ½ cup oat milk
- ½ cup soy yoghurt
- Juice of ½ lemon
- 1 tbsp date syrup
- 4-5 tbsp chia seeds
Instructions
- Put the strawberries, oat milk and soy yoghurt into a blender, and blend until you get a smooth mixture.
- Pour the mixture into a bowl, add chia seeds and mix well.
- Let the mixture sit for at least 20-30 minutes to absorb the liquid, while stirring it occasionally. I usually make the chia pudding in advance, and leave it in the fridge overnight.
- This strawberry chia pudding is great when combined with fresh fruits, but it also goes well with, for example, this creamy millet pudding or some roasted almond cream from this poached pear and almond cream recipe.
- To assemble it, just fill a glass or a jar with some cream and pour the strawberry chia pudding on top of it.
- Top with some fresh strawberries or other seasonal fruits of choice.
Notes
- Some general guideline for mixing chia with liquid to get a thick pudding is to mix it in a 1:4 volume ratio. In this recipe that would be about 5 tbsp, or a bit more than ¼ cup chia seeds. I like a slightly softer consistency, so I will use 4 tbsp of chia seeds.
- Instead of date syrup, you can use agave or maple syrup. If you are avoiding those kinds of sweeteners altogether, you can sweeten the mixture with a couple of dates (in that case, blend a bit longer or soak the dates in water to soften before blending).
- I always like to use a whisk for stirring the chia pudding, because it really helps them get evenly distributed and absorb the liquid quickly, without forming lumps.
