It’s been about a thousand years since I posted a recipe, but this one’s worth knowing about if you like tapioca. If you don’t like tapioca, on the other hand, you might hate this stuff.

The TL;DR

Prep Time: ~5 minutes
Cook* Time: 1 – 8 hours
Who’ll Like It: Tapioca fans ❤
Who’ll Hate It: Tapioca haters XP
Best Uses: Dessert, Breakfast
Hardest Part: Remembering to buy the d**n Chia Seeds
Pairs Well With: Disorganized mornings; late-night cravings

*And by “cook,” I mean “stick it in the fridge and mostly ignore it”

The Actual Recipe

I’ve adapted this from a variety of similar recipes with similar goals. One of the best things about it is that it’s adaptable. Lactose intolerant? Use almond milk. Allergic to almonds? Try coconut milk. Hate coconut? Use rice milk. Don’t like artificial sweeteners? No worries; you can use sugar or agave or honey or maple syrup or…

Here’s What You’ll Need (for each serving)

• 1.5 tablespoons of chia seed (I’m using black chia seed because that’s what I’ve got, but white is fine, too)
• .5 tablespoon unsweetened coconut shreds (or powder)
• .5 cup unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• 1-2 tsp sucralose
• ~.25 tsp coconut extract
• ~.25 tsp vanilla extract

Here’s What You Do

• Put everything except the chia into a small container with a lid (I’ve repurposed a glass jar that came with shredded cheese in it)
• Stir briefly
• Add the chia
• Whisk all the things briefly with a small whisk (a fork will work fine, too)
• Stick the lid on and stick that bad boy (or girl, or gender-nonbinary personage) in the fridge
• Chill for a minimum of 1 hour, but preferably more like overnight, then come back, stir, and stuff it into your maw

For even distribution of the chia seeds, I’ve been coming back 30 minutes into the chill time to re-whisk everything, but that step is optional.

Most of the recipes I’ve found for this use 1 cup of whatever milk-like product and 3 or 4 tablespoons of chia seeds, but when I made my first batch, I found that makes rather an enormous portion. I halved all the volumes to arrive at what seems, for me, like a more reasonable end product.

That said, you can definitely shove an entire 1-cup-of-milk portion of this into your face if you try hard enough.

Notes

• I’ve read that highly acidic ingredients can prevent the chia seeds from “gelling” adequately, so if you’re going to toss in orange juice, lemon curd, etc, you might want to do it right before you serve this up.
• If you eat this stuff after one hour, chances are good that it’ll still be a little loosey-goosey and a little crunchy. Don’t worry, though, you won’t die. Or, at any rate, I didn’t.

I entered the ingredients above into LoseIt’s recipe calculator, and here’s what it threw back:

The (V) is for “vegan,” since I also made a dairy-based version and entered that one into the calculator.

I suspect that this would be really, really good with lemon curd … which, of course, I don’t happen to have on hand. Even better with berries (which I do have) and lemon curd.

As always, I’ll try to get some pix up here soon.

‘Til then, please enjoy this picture of me looking disconcertingly like a young George “Dubya” Bush on the trapeze:

I misunderestimated how aggressively this trapeze would attempt to remove my clothes.

And also this one of “splits down,” just because:

Danseur Booty: 1 / Tights-Removing Trapeze: 0