Healthy Chocolate Pudding

No, this is no tofu pudding. This is no "sugar-free" pudding with fake sweeteners, sugar alcohols or stevia, this is a delicious pudding made from mostly raw whole foods. This is healthy enough that I've had it for breakfast a couple times. It's probably less calories than many cereals people eat for breakfast.

I wasn't going to include this because it wasn't as affordable for a treat as I'd like to promote. But in comparison to a similar sized serving of a frozen dessert like soy icecream, I'd say it's pretty comparable.

The key to this recipe is a nicely ripened mango. I've made this several times now, and the riper the mango, the less it clashes with the chocolate.

So initially I made this with a handful of macadamia nuts (unsalted!), but when I ran out of those, I made this with cashews and was not disappointed. Today I made it with raw almonds and it was good, but I think I prefer cashews.

I take about a handful of nuts per mango and blend them up in a blender or food processor (the blender seems to work best for this recipe) until I have a finely ground powder. You could also use a nut butter, in which case I could add that after blending the mango. Then i rinse and peel the mango with a veggie peeler. I cut the mango off the core in smallish pieces and put all those pieces in the blender. I add some vanilla extract, maybe a teaspoon or so. I blend this for a bit, and I might have to scrape the sides and the bottom to get it all blended. Then I add cocoa powder to taste. I usually add enough that it looks and tastes like chocolate pudding (although I've not had any sort of chocolate pudding in a long time, so I'm not sure how accurate this is). Then it's done! It should be a nice pudding-like consistency.

I would like to also try this with avocado instead of mango some day...