Fill your chocolate craving with our homemade and naturally sweetened creamy vegan chocolate pudding! It’s made with simple ingredients you probably already have in your kitchen! Our pudding is made on the stovetop and is gluten free, peanut free, soy free, and egg free.
No matter how healthy a person eats, sometimes you just need a creamy, sweet treat now and then.
Cool and creamy chocolate pudding was one of my childhood favorites until I discovered that I couldn’t eat dairy or soy. We switched to making our own homemade pudding after I went dairy free, so we got a lot of practice making pudding at home.
Homemade pudding is really simple to make and it’s much healthier (and allergy friendly) than most of the pre-made stuff at the store. This pudding is superbly creamy and it tastes amazing, you won’t miss the dairy at all.
Read for our tips on how to make this recipe!
How to make dairy free chocolate pudding
Here are the steps to make this recipe (the full recipe card is at the end of the post, this is just an overview):
- Combine the dairy free milks and the maple syrup in a small saucepan and bring to simmer over medium or medium-low heat.
- Once the milk mixture is hot, scoop out 1/2 cup of the hot milk and set aside in a small bowl. Reduce the heat a bit to keep this at a low simmer.
- Into the small bowl, whisk the cocoa powder and cornstarch quickly into the set aside milk until mixed thoroughly and there are no lumps.
- Slowly add this cornstarch mixture (aka slurry) to the simmering milk, whisking as you add to prevent lumps. The pudding should begin to thicken immediately.
- Whisk in vanilla and a dash of salt.
- Cook for a couple more minutes, whisking or stirring constantly to avoid scorching or creating lumps.
- Dish pudding into individual dishes or ramekins and chill in the fridge for later until completely chilled. Alternately, you can serve this pudding warm if you choose.
How to prevent homemade pudding from getting lumpy
If you’ve ever made homemade gravies, sauces, or puddings, you know that the recipe is usually pretty simple but the biggest hurdle can be lumps from the cornstarch.
No one wants lumpy pudding, trust me!
Here are some tips for non-lumpy pudding that everyone will love:
- Never add cornstarch directly to the pan of hot milk, always scoop out some hot milk into a separate bowl to mix your cornstarch.
- Once you make your cornstarch slurry (the cornstarch milk mixture), pour it slowly into the pan and whisk quickly and constantly as you pour.
- Don’t stop stirring once you’ve added the cornstarch. Keep stirring and whisking until you take it off the heat completely, or it could still create lumps.
- Flat whisks work the best for whisking cornstarch into things. We have a set of flat whisks that we’ve had for years that are my favorite for gravies and puddings.
My daughter made some of this pudding at home and forgot to add the cornstarch to the bowl instead of directly to the pan. The pudding had so many lumps it looked like tapioca pudding ?
So what do you do if you end up with lumpy pudding? If your pudding does happen to have a few lumps, it will still taste good, so don’t toss it.
We still ate the pudding my daughter made and just pretended it was tapioca. You can always try pressing the pudding through a metal kitchen sieve to remove the lumps as well.
We used those Oui yogurt glass containers to divide and chill our pudding! They make dairy free Oui yogurt, so we had a few of their glass jars in our pantry and they’re perfect for pudding.
Making this into homemade dairy free “Snack Packs” for lunches
For our photos of this recipe, we used those cute Oui yogurt jars that we love to reuse (Oui makes really good dairy free yogurt).
But those mini jars don’t have lids normally, so you can use any airtight container you like for packing single servings of pudding for allergy friendly pudding cups.
If you want something more sustainable, you can stick with small glass jars with a tight fitting lid. But if you are concerned about smaller kids with glass in their lunchboxes, you can use any small reusable containers or try out these compostable corn plastic cups with lids.
Variations for our vegan chocolate pudding
I LOVE chocolate (maybe too much), but if chocolate is not your thing, try our butter rum version. When I originally created this recipe I also made a butter rum variation similar to butterscotch, another one of my favorite flavors.
Simply use coconut sugar instead of maple syrup, omit the cocoa powder, and use 1 teaspoon each vanilla extract, imitation butter flavor, and rum extract. So yummy!
If you’re omitting the cocoa powder, you might need add an additional Tablespoon of cornstarch to keep it nice and thick.
Some other fun variations you can make:
- Mexican hot chocolate pudding: add some ground cinnamon, a dash of cayenne, and serve warm for a spiced hot chocolate pudding.
- Chocolate Mint Pudding: Add a bit of mint extract for a cool chocolate mint pudding.
- Chocolate Orange pudding: add some orange extract or a little orange juice and orange zest for a chocolate orange treat.
- Dark chocolate pudding: add an additional 1-2 Tablespoons of cocoa powder to this recipe for a dark chocolate pudding.
Creamy Vegan Chocolate Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 ½ cups unsweetened dairy free milk (such as rice milk, oat milk, etc.)
- ½ cup canned coconut milk
- ¼ cup pure maple syrup
- 3 Tablespoons cocoa powder
- 3 Tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Dash salt
Instructions
- In a small saucepan, combine milks and maple syrup and bring to simmer over medium heat.
- Scoop out 1/2 cup of the hot milk and set aside in a small bowl. Into this bowl, whisk in the cocoa powder and cornstarch quickly until mixed thoroughly and there are no lumps.
- Slowly add this cornstarch mixture to the simmering milk whisking as you add to prevent lumps. The pudding should begin to thicken immediately.
- Whisk in vanilla and a dash of salt.
- Cook for a couple more minutes, whisking or stirring constantly to avoid scorching or creating lumps.
- Dish pudding into individual dishes and chill in the fridge for later until completely chilled. Alternately, you can serve this pudding warm if you choose.
- Enjoy!
Video
Notes
Nutrition
We recently updated this post from 2014, here’s one of our older photos:
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and allergy friendly food blogger of 12 years based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
I made this dairy and gluten free recipe and served it warm, and it was delicious. I had trouble with lumps also, but decided to press on and enjoy it anyway!
Thank you for the feedback Deena! I find that making sure there are no lumps in this recipe is the hardest part about it.
Any advice for a coconut free version?
Hi Lydia, you can make this without coconut milk, just use a nice creamy non-dairy milk for all of it. It might not be quite as creamy, but it will still work out without coconut milk. I just added the canned coconut milk to this recipe for creaminess, so just swap that coconut milk for more of the other milk you use. I bet oat milk would be a great sub since it’s thick.
I love Silk! Regular milk makes my tummy sad plus it has all those calories! Thanks for sharing.
This looks absolutely delicious! Chocolate pudding was a favorite when I was young, but I haven’t had it in ages. And that butterscotch version sounds even better…if that’s possible! Love Silk! #client
Thanks David! 🙂
Delicious!! I love me some Silk!!
Silk is the only milk we buy now. The recipe looks yummy!
Thanks Jill!
LOVE me some Almond Milk and Almond Milk Blends! I’ll definitely have to try this one out! thanks for sharing such an awesome dish!
Glad you like it Jeremy! I definitely agree about the almond milk – it tastes really good
Looks yummy! Almond milk is my absolute favorite. I’ve never been able to find a good vegan pudding recipe, so I’m really excited to try this.
Glad to help! Let me know how you like it
Mmmmmmm! Looks PHENOMENAL!!! What’s the significance of corn starch though?
Cornstarch is what thickens the milk, otherwise it would be just chocolate milk 😉 If you can’t have corn or are grain-free, you can try using arrowroot starch or tapioca starch instead. I haven’t tried these so I can’t guarantee the results with those. Some people use agar agar or gelatin to thicken in recipes as well, but those would turn out closer to a custard or panna cotta in texture rather than pudding – which isn’t a bad thing if that’s what you’re aiming for
Sarah…this looks so darn good! I wonder if my kids will eat it 🙂 I love Silk brand, the only brand I use for my Almond milk 🙂
It’s a great brand! I was really glad to see that they don’t use crageenan or xanthan gum, too
Silk is the only non-dairy milk to go with! Literally every other brand has carageenan!
I agree! I have IBS so hopefully making those little changes will help 🙂
I haven’t had chocolate pudding in forever. This looks mighty delish. Thanks for the recipe and write up!
Thank you Tiffany!
This looks so good! And easy too. Love that.
Easy is the best part about this recipe! It is almost and instant pudding, so you can eat it cold or warm