It’s Sunday, so time for a bit of meal prep for the week ahead!👩🏽‍🍳 In order to avoid grazing at the office or when working from home during this pandemic (working next to the kitchen is not the easiest…), I have been looking into prepping some healthier snacks at home to tame my sweet cravings.

This week, I’ve been making those chia seeds based pudding in little yogurt pots without using any refined sugar in the preparation (I have been trying to cut out as much as possible my intake of white/brown sugars and sweeteners).

I know I’m a bit late on the trend of chia pudding but hey, I had more time this year (like all of us!) to experiment new things! 😜The fact that this little seed is loaded with all sorts of nutrients (minerals, vitamins, fibers, proteins, omega 3 fatty acids) makes it a great choice for snacking or it could also be consumed for breakfast as well presented in a bowl with all sorts of colorful toppings.

I decided to prepare them in yogurt glass pots with lids that I bought from Amazon (143 mL container to portion control myself) so that I can prep them all at the same time and keep them ready to grab and go.

To give a bit of flavor to the puds, I added a bit of maple syrup 🍁to sweeten them and I used portion controlled desiccated coconut chips/mango cubes and lactose free yogurt to make them low FODMAP too so all good my IBS sensitive people 😁! I added different fruits as well to give a bit of variety but you could just pick your favorite flavor and adjust the proportion to your taste.

Here we go with the recipes of

My fruity chia puds 🍓🥭🍇

Servings: 12 x 143 mL yogurt pots

Time required: 50 minutes

Level of difficulty: Easy Peasy

Equipment required: grinder for the chocolate chia “mousse”

Ingredients

• 1 cup of chia seeds
• 3 cups of milk (lactose free semi skimmed if necessary)
• 5 tbsp of maple syrup
• 8 tbsp of lactose free yogurt (heaped)
• 1 lemon zested (no juice)
• 1 handful of coconut chips
• 2 tbsp of cacao powder (100%)
• 1 small mango cubed
• 10 medium sized strawberries
• 1 cup of blueberries
• Pumpkin seeds

Instructions

For the Mango coconut puds 🥭 and the blueberry lemon puds 🍇🍋 (2×4 pots):

1. Mix 3/4 cup of chia seeds with 2 + 1/4 cups of milk and 2 tbsp of maple syrup then set aside in the fridge for at least 20 minutes (you could start the chocolate puds in the meantime)
2. Put most of the blueberries (reserve a few for decoration) in a saucepan with a tbsp of water and a tbsp of maple syrup then stew them on a gentle heat until they burst and gets slightly syrupy then leave to cool down
3. Take the chia pudding out of the fridge then divide the mixture in 2
4. In the first mixture add most of the chopped coconut chips in and in the second mixture add the lemon zest in
5. For the mango coconut puds, layer mango/chia coconut pud/mango/chia coconut pud/coconut chips
6. For the blueberry lemon puds, layer blueberry compote/chia lemon pud/ blueberry compote/fresh blueberries/sprinkle of pumpkin seeds

For the chocolate and strawberry chia mousse 🍓🍫 (4 pots):

1. Use the grinder to grind 1/4 cup of chia seeds (alternatively, you could use a Nutribullet if you have one and place all the ingredients in before blending)
2. In a bowl, mix the chia powder with 3/4 cup of milk, the cacao and 1 tbsp of maple syrup (you can add more maple syrup if you like it sweeter)
3. Mix the yogurt with 1 tbsp of maple syrup and chop the strawberries into cubes
4. Layer the chocolate mixture at the bottom of the yogurt pot then some strawberries then the yogurt and finish with some strawberries with a sprinkle of pumpkin seeds (or mix it up and let your creativity do its thing! 😊)

The only thing left is to enjoy! 😊 Let me know if you have some other flavor combos that you like, I like diversity in my puds so I would give it a try!