Silky Vegan Chocolate Mint Pudding

The incredible Homemade Raw Vegan Ice Cream Bars posted at Veggie Wedgie caught my attention a while back. I actually experimented a bit with the vanilla coconut ice cream, but it wasn’t until my fascination with the idea of the chocolaty smoothness of the choco-avocado ice cream bars truly kicked in that I realized what a killer recipe this is. So last night I tried my own version, based totally on Veggie Wedgies’, but with a few tweaks. I don’t have the accoutrements to make actual ice cream bars, nor do I have an ice cream maker, so I decided to just go for a well-chilled chocolate pudding. Besides, doing it that way meant that I didn’t have to wait as long to eat it!

Silky Vegan Chocolate Mint Pudding

1 large, ripe avocado
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 T powdered cacao (cocoa powder), unsweetened
2 T water
2 drops pure vanilla extract
3-4 drops pure peppermint extract

I whipped everything together until smooth and silky. The above were just the right amounts of ingredients to whip up one large serving in the chopper attachment of my hand wand-blender. I’m sure you can use a regular blender or food processor just as well, although you might want to double the recipe or more for that.

It actually gets as silky smooth or more than regular commercial pudding. I placed the resulting mixture in a stainless steel bowl and put it in the freezer for about 1-1/2 hours. It was a-MA-zing. I ate the whole thing in no time flat. Ate a fair portion of it, in fact, even before it got into the freezer, and it was just as good, thick and creamy at room temperature as it was cold. The ultimate vegan chocolate fix.Imagine topping this with a handful of fresh blueberries or strawberries…

The photo would have been much prettier if I’d have stuck a sprig of fresh mint from the garden into the pudding, but I was in too much of a hurry to eat it to think about that until the bowl was scraped clean. Next time.