© J.N. Urbanski

Here’s a highly nutritious breakfast that looks like a chocolate pudding made with raw oats, avocado and nuts that makes a good replacement for oatmeal or porridge, if you need that sort of thing for kids or other family members who dislike it.

Vegan Raw Chocolate Oat Pudding

1 cup of oats soaked overnight in water or almond milk
Half a cup of water (additional to what the oats are soaking in)
1 medium avocado (peeled)
2 heaped tablespoons of cacao powder or 1 heaped tablespoon of cocoa
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 heaped tablespoon of cashew cream (for recipe see previous post)
1 heaped tablespoon of almond cream (see below)
Chopped dried apricots or sugared fruit to garnish

To soak the oats: put one cup of oats in a bowl and cover with the water or almond milk. Soak for at least four hours. Put the oats in a blender with the chopped avocado, nut creams, half the additional water and maple syrup. Mix the ingredients with a spoon. Once the ingredients are mixed together in the blender, sieve the cocoa/cacao powder onto the mixture. Purée for a minute until smooth. Take off the lid and stir in a splash more water. Purée again, adding a dribble more water until the pudding has reached the desired thickness. Refrigerate until set and serve with chopped dried apricots or a sugared fruit garnish.

Add an extra teaspoon or two of cocoa if you need it to be darker and more chocolatey, but sieve the powder into the mixture with a small tea strainer, stir quickly and blend for a further minute or two. If you do add more cocoa powder, then add more maple syrup to taste.

Almond Cream

Take a cup of almonds, put them in a mason jar and cover with water until the water is about a quarter-inch above the cashews. Soak overnight and in the morning pour the whole jar into the blender and purée the mixture for two minutes. The mixture should thicken after you’ve finished blending.