This was born a few years ago now when my good friend Jo Whitton of Quirky Cooking fame came to stay with me in the lead up to her first book launch. I made her a few treats to take to the hotel for her stay there afterwards, so she didn’t have to worry about resorting to hotel snacks – pringles and mm’s are hardly options for an allergy friendly cook book author! She shared the pomegranate chia pudding I’d made for her on her page and a number of people asked, so here it came to live. Simple deliciousness, and the pomegranate arils give you explosive sweetness through the rich creaminess that make the texture particularly exciting! Don’t panic if pomegranate isn’t in season or all just feels a bit too difficult – just double up on the berries, fresh or frozen instead. That’s what I do most of the year.
Pro tip: These are great and fresh made up to 3 days in advance, so you can stack 3 jars and get a production line happening, and make 3 at once, or use a big 1kg jar and triple the recipe, and take from the big jar into a smaller bowl each day. I like to save the nuts until the day I’m serving though, and scatter them on top fresh, so they’re crunchy and rich and contrasting to the soft deliciousness of the pudding.
Second pro tip: For variety and continuing to enjoy something like this, you can change the berries you use, switch it out for mango in the summer, pears in the autumn, stewed apples, you can change the nuts, switch the pepitas for sunflower seeds, skip the cinnamon and use vanilla paste or powder… change keeps things delicious and exciting so be sure to do that with this over time.
Perfect for a busy sporting teen, active person and teacher on the go for a quick afternoon pick me up, substantial enough to see you through till dinner, too!
And here she is with a few extra pomegranate arils on top. So beautiful they are, like little rubies, don’t you think?
Enjoy!
Pomegranate and Cinnamon Chia Pudding Recipe
Ingredients
Equipment Needed
- 300 ml jar
Main Ingredients
- 2 tbsp frozen berries of your choice
- 1-2 tablespoons pomegranate seeds (or just more berries) (to de seed a pomegranate, simply cut in half, face half down into a big bowl, and whack the skin with a rolling pin and watch them fall out easily)
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon*
- 2 tablespoons chia seeds
- coconut cream Make sure it's room temperature so that the fat/milk aren't separated. If they are, a quick heating of them in a pan on the stove until they're not hot, just melted into each other (takes about 1 minute) is all it takes.
- coconut water
Optional
- 1 tsp maple / honey or rice malt syrup Personally I find the berries, coconut water and pomegranate enough but up to you!
- 1 tbsp pepitas / pumpkin seeds Toasted = tastier and delicious crunchy texture
- 1 tablespoon chopped toasted almonds or hazelnuts I ALWAYS do this - great taste and texture!
Instructions
- Put all ingredients in jar.
- Then fill jar 2/3 full with coconut cream and 1/3 coconut water (I used @naturalrawc ) Give it a good shaky shaky and set in fridge over night or at least 3 hours. Have to avoid coconut? You can use oat or almond milk instead, no problems.
- Note: If the jar is bigger, just roughly multiply out all measures and then still do the 2/3 coconut cream / 1/3 coconut water to whatever the jar size you're using is, once you've multiplied all the other ingredients
Hot pudding variation
- If you like a warm breakky in the winter, Pop everything into the pot minus the pomegranate, and stir occasionally on low heat for 20 mins. Serve warm and top with additional nuts, seeds and the fresh pomegranate. For thermomix, you could do 5 mins, 50C, Speed 2, same deal leaving the pomegranates out until the end.
Comments 1
HI Alexx, I feel like some of the method is missing in this recipe. It lists the ingredients then it skips to Then fill a jar with coconut cream and coconut water….
I am assuming that you add the chia and cinnamon then the coconut cream and water, then top with goodies in the morning? Can you please let me know if this is right? Thank you x