Giada De Laurentiis’ Lighter Chocolate Pudding Is a ‘Dessert You’ll Really Feel Good About Eating,’ According to the Food Network Star
Giada De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding is a dairy-free dessert recipe. But it still has everything to love about the original. Dubbed a “luxuriously rich pudding” by the celebrity chef, her lighter version is filled with chia seeds and coconut yogurt. And, perhaps best of all, it takes only five minutes to prep.
Giada De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding is an ‘Eat Better, Feel Better’ recipe
De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding is a dish from her latest cookbook, Eat Better, Feel Better: My Recipes for Wellness and Healing, Inside and Out. Its release in 2021 was the culmination of 10 years of work. De Laurentiis spent a decade writing the cookbook.
The inspiration behind it was a shift in De Laurentiis’ life. She’d been getting sick often and generally not feeling her best. So she embarked on what would become a 10-year “exploration.”
“This book is the culmination of a 10-year journey, an exploration that not so coincidentally took place between my fortieth and fiftieth birthdays,” she wrote in the introduction to Eat Better, Feel Better.
“Over the last decade, I’ve made a conscious effort to take control of my health because it had finally become impossible to ignore the fact that the choices (or lack thereof) I’d been making for the past 20 years just weren’t working for me anymore,” she continued.
This is where De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding comes in. It’s one of the many lighter options in Eat Better, Feel Better.
Prep De Laurentiis’ No-Cook Chocolate Coconut Budino in 5 minutes
Featured on Giadzy and Simply Giada, De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding is a lighter take on traditional pudding. Called Chocolate Chia “Budino” or No-Cook Chocolate Coconut Budino, the Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef discussed it in a January 2022 blog post.
“A budino is a decadent, delicious custard-based Italian dessert,” she said. “And this is my healthy spin on it. Chia seeds and coconut yogurt (but regular yogurt works too!) work together to make this luxuriously rich pudding that’s [chock]-full of healthy superfoods.
De Laurentiis added: “This is a dessert you’ll really feel good about eating!”
There’s not much to the recipe. According to De Laurentiis Food Network recipe instructions, it only requires five minutes of prep. Essentially, seven ingredients are mixed together in a bowl.
How to make De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding
It doesn’t get much simpler than this. To make the pudding, De Laurentiis combines unsweetened almond milk, coconut yogurt — she prefers dairy-free such as COYO — “good quality” unsweetened cocoa powder, maple syrup, vanilla extract, kosher salt, and chia seeds.
For those who want chocolate pudding in a hurry, this isn’t it. Sure, De Laurentiis’ chocolate pudding takes only five minutes to prep but it has to sit in the fridge for a minimum of six hours.
When it reaches a pudding consistency only then is it ready to eat. To serve, the Everyday Italian alum likes to top it with chopped chocolate-covered almonds and fresh raspberries.
