Vegan chocolate pudding is made with sweet potatoes, dates, and other simple ingredients. Refined sugar-free, oil-free, gluten-free, and nut-free, this vegan chocolate pudding recipe is creamy, delicious, and compliant.
My husband LOVES dessert, so I made a chocolate vegan pudding from sweet potatoes. Although I don't care for sweets and prefer savory foods, I try to make healthy desserts at home to satisfy my hubby's sweet tooth. Not only is this vegan chocolate pudding recipe easy, but it contains very few ingredients.
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Because sweet potatoes are naturally sweet, you can make a healthy vegan chocolate pudding with few ingredients. And my vegan chocolate pudding recipe doesn't have any refined sugar.
I use dates and maple syrup to enhance the flavor of the sweet potatoes and other ingredients.
And did I mention the pudding freezes well for fudgesicles? YUM!
Different Types of Sweet Potatoes
Although there are 4,000 different types of potatoes, five main sweet potato varieties have various functions:
- Purple Stokes: slow bake, mash, curries, soups, dessert
- Garnet: Roasting, baking, stuffing, mashing, casseroles, soups, pureeing, pies
- Hannah: Roasting, baking, mashing, putting in stews and soups, fries
- Japanese: Roasting, stuffing, steaming, fries, soups, stews
- Jewel: Boiling, baking, casseroles, sweet potato pie
Purple potatoes' flavor and texture are drier, denser, and richer in taste, with a well-balanced sweetness than other sweet potatoes and yams. So, I chose purple potatoes for my chocolate vegan pudding recipe.
However, purple sweet potatoes are sometimes challenging to find, but garnet sweet potatoes work perfectly for this vegan chocolate pudding.
Choosing and Storing Sweet Potatoes
Choose sweet potatoes with tight, unwrinkled skins without any bruises or blemishes. Bigger, however, is only sometimes better; larger sweet potatoes are starchier. So, look at small to medium-sized sweet potatoes.
Unfortunately, sweet potatoes generally do not store well; once they spoil, they rot quickly. So even if you think you can cut away the spoiled parts of sweet potato, it negatively affects the entire potato's taste.
Pudding Ingredients
- Purple Sweet Potatoes (or Garnet Sweet Potatoes): The purple-fleshed sweet potato has a slightly sweeter flavor than the regular variety.
- Medjool Dates: The difference between Medjool dates and regular dates is that they come from different cultivars of the same plant. Medjool dates are picked early in the ripening season when they are soft.
- Unsweetened Cocoa Powder: Natural or unsweetened cocoa powder is dried roasted cocoa solids that are ground up; there is no extra processing.
- Maple Syrup: Pure maple syrup is my favorite way to sweeten desserts.
- Vanilla Extract: Pure vanilla extract uses only two ingredients: real vanilla beans and alcohol
- Oat Milk: I like using oat milk because it is naturally creamy.
- Blackberries: Optional garnish.
- Raspberries: Optional garnish.
- Mint: Optional garnish.
Pudding Ingredient Substitutions
- Use any type of sweet potato instead of purple sweet potatoes.
- If Medjool dates aren't available, choose regular dates instead.
- Try date syrup or rice syrup instead of maple syrup.
- Vanilla paste or powder substitutes vanilla extract.
- Any unsweetened, unflavored plant milk works well.
How to Soften Dates
Although most dates are soft enough to be blended, sometimes they harden a bit. To soften dates quickly, boil a cup of water, soak the dates for 10 minutes, drain them, and then add them to the pudding ingredients.
Making a vegan chocolate pudding recipe helps add some milk to the base of the food processor or high-speed blender. As a result, the ingredients blend well together.
Also, I would suggest blending on high and stopping several times to scrape the sides until the pudding mixture is thin. Once blended to a smooth texture, the vegan chocolate pudding is refrigerated and thickens while it cools.
Pudding Variations
Even though this pudding is great plain, I sometimes like to give it a little pizazz. For instance, there are ways to change or enhance the flavor of the base recipe.
- Add ½ cup peanut butter to the food processor or blender for peanut butter chocolate pudding.
- Top with fresh raspberries, blueberries, mandarin orange segments, or pineapple
- Put sliced bananas and strawberries for a banana split pudding.
- Sprinkle with Spanish peanut or your favorite nuts
- Crush peppermint candy for a Christmas treat
- Toast unsweetened coconut flakes and sprinkle on top of the pudding
- Blend fresh cherries in the pudding recipe for cherry pudding
Next, make the vegan pudding a little fancy by putting it in a favorite dessert dish and serving it. My husband loved this vegan pudding recipe and asked if there was more for tomorrow. Lucky for him, I made a whole recipe!
Recipe FAQs
It depends on the variety, but purple sweet potatoes are generally mildly sweet and almost wine-like. They tend to be much drier and starchier than traditional sweet potatoes. For this reason, purple sweet potatoes are often cooked for longer than traditional sweet potatoes.
Their purple coloring actually comes from anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants which help to guard against cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Purple sweet potatoes are a good source of beta-carotene. Still, they are an even richer source of anthocyanin pigments, which act as antioxidants that can help reduce inflammation and boost your immune system. Purple sweet potatoes have about three times more anthocyanins than the average blueberry.
Tips
- Cut the peeled sweet potatoes into equal sizes so they cook evenly.
- Larger or smaller potato pieces may vary the cooking time.
- Pierce cooked sweet potatoes with a fork to ensure they were thoroughly cooked.
- Let the potatoes cool completely before adding them to the blender or food processor.
- If you aren't a chocolate fan, try vegan vanilla pudding.
- Pour the vegan chocolate pudding into popsicle mold or ice cube trays for a frozen treat in the summer months. My kids LOVE fudgsicles.
- Top vegan chocolate pudding with berries, toasted coconut, nuts, or vegan whipped cream topping.
- If you don't like chocolate, try Lemon Pudding.
If you LOVE chocolate and something sweet, try vegan chocolate pudding made from sweet potatoes.
Other Great Vegan Desserts
If you love this vegan chocolate pudding recipe, give us a 5-star review and comment below. We would love to hear from you.
📖 Recipe
Chocolate Vegan Pudding
Ingredients
- 2 Purple Sweet Potatoes or orange sweet potatoes (yield 2 ½ cups), peeled and cut into equal-sized chunks.
- 2 cups oat milk or plant milk of choice
- ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 Tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 8 Medjool dates pitted
Instructions
- Peel and cut sweet potatoes into equal-sized chunks.
- Place cut and peeled potato chunks in a pot and cover with water.
- Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer, and cover for 20-25 minutes or until potatoes are soft and can be pierced with a fork.
- In the meantime, in a glass measuring cup, boil one cup of water in the microwave and place the pitted dates in the water to soften them for easier blending.
- Drain dates.
- Drain potatoes and allow to cool to the touch
- In a food processor or high-speed blender, add ½ cup of plant milk first, followed by the sweet potatoes, pitted dates, cocoa powder, maple syrup, and vanilla extract.
- Process/blend on high.
- Add the remaining 1 ½ cups of plant milk.
- Process blend again, scraping down the sides with a spatula and blending again until smooth.
- Then, transfer the contents of the food processor/blender to a bowl, cover, and refrigerate for a few hours to chill.
- The mixture will thicken in the refrigerator.
- Serve as is, or add a variety of possible toppings.
Notes
- Add ½ cup peanut butter to the food processor or blender for peanut butter chocolate pudding.
- Top with fresh raspberries, blueberries, mandarin orange segments, or pineapple
- Put sliced bananas and strawberries for a banana split pudding.
- Sprinkle with Spanish peanut or your favorite nuts.
- Crush peppermint candy for a Christmas treat.
- Toast unsweetened coconut flakes and sprinkle them on top of the pudding.
- Blend fresh cherries in the pudding recipe for cherry pudding.
- Cut the peeled sweet potatoes into equal sizes, so they cook evenly.
- Pour the vegan chocolate pudding into popsicle mold or ice cube trays for a frozen treat.
- If you aren't a chocolate fan, try vegan vanilla pudding.
- Pierce cooked sweet potatoes with a fork to ensure they were thoroughly cooked.
- Larger or smaller potato pieces may vary the cooking time.
Nutrition
Hi! My name is Kathy, I am a retired high school English teacher & vegan enthusiast and blogger. My entire blog is fully plant-based vegan. I truly believe what we eat & how we live determines our health & the preservation of our planet! 🙂
Laura Olson
works with all colors of sweet potatoes, sometimes it's difficult to find just what I need at the grocery. so creamy
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Laura, yes, it does. You can substitute any sweet potato if you can't find the purple ones.
ACC
I need to use up half a container of silken tofu; looking at this recipe, was wondering if you think it would be good as an additional ingredient?
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Amelia, there are recipes that you can use the silken tofu instead of the sweet potatoes, but I wouldn't add it to the recipe. However, you could make a separate batch exchanging the sweet potatoes with the silken tofu. Or, if you are looking for a way to use up your silken tofu, I would make a salad dressing to replace cashews in a dressing recipe.
Marshal Hargreaves
Fabulous!!! This recipe is a keeper!!! Absolutely delicious!!!
Larry Fried
I am not able to Print this recipe. The print button doesn't work. I went to the vanilla pudding recipe and was able to print that out just fine.
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Larry, Thank you for letting me know. I will let my tech guy know so that it can be fixed. I appreciate the information.
Brenda R
Hi Kathy,
I'm new to eating vegan and healthier really. I'd like to know what all the sources are of unrefined sugar. You use maple syrup in this recipe...can I use honey? Is honey an unrefined sugar?
Thanks, and by the way I love your website and recipes. I made the minestrone soup and my family loved it! I'm going to try many other recipes soon!
Brenda
Kathy Carmichael
Hi Brenda! Thanks for your feedback. Honey is a controversial vegan issue. Honey is a natural unrefined sugar. However, the controversy is based on the idea that because it is produced from bees' labor, it isn't vegan. So, it all depends on how you feel about that idea. Honey, maple syrup, agave, Molasses, Coconut Sugar, Sucanat, Brown Rice Syrup, Date Sugar, and maple sugar are sources of unrefined sugar. I'm so glad you liked the Minestrone. Please let me know if you have any other questions. And, Happy New Year to you and your family.
Tom Batter
Recipe as is was delicious. I added a ripe banana to the blend which added a touch more sweetness and made it even creamier. Thanks so much for a delicious dessert recipe.
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