nearly carb free friendship - sugar free gluten free pudding

Friendship is weird. It is wonderfully complicated and gets better once you have gone through something really unpleasant together and come out the other side still wanting to talk to each other. So when a friend tells me I can't eat _____, I feel a special need to try to ease the transition. Us, those whom gluten cannot pass our lips, understand better than most, what it feels like when your food life is messed with.

That is how a nearly carb-free dessert was concocted. Count yourself among my pals, and a lover of sweets, well this is my best effort at a chocolate dessert for you. 

This recipe takes two days to make, which is ridiculous if you compared it to traditional pudding, but consider it like you would icebox pie, something that needs the power of the refrigerator and time to make delicious. 

There are three steps: creating the licorice syrup, soaking the chia seeds and cocoa powder, and then combining and cooking. Using both the licorice and stevia worked well together. Licorice has that sweetness that doesn't hit till your finished and your palate is nearly cleaned, and the stevia hits more up front at the start of the first bite - so together they work pretty well and don't test chemically or too weird.  (Surprisingly, the finished product does not taste like licorice at all!)

This isn't going to be a sweet dessert, it is going to end up tasting like a chocolate pudding like thing but its no pudding pop. You might be tempted to add more sweetener(s), don't. Adding more stevia or licorice results in a very off-putting mess that tastes more like you lost a dare and had to eat an entire packet of Equal. 

Licorice "syrup" 

3-4" piece of licorice root, bent into pieces if you can

1 1/2 cups of boiling water

1. In a heat safe bowl, pour the boiling water over the licorice root. 

2. Allow to steep for at least 2 hours, overnight if you can. 

The water will turn light yellow, then bright yellow.

Pudding base

1 cup coconut milk - the pour-able-when-cold kind from a tetra pack

1/4 cup chia seeds

1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

pinch of sea salt

1. Combine all ingredients - you are going to need a fork or whisk to break up the cocoa powder

2. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours or overnight

Finished product

1/4 cup of the licorice syrup

Pudding base

4 drops liquid stevia extract

1. In a saucepan, boil 1/4 cup of the licorice syrup. 

2. Once it has come to a boil, add in the pudding base, stirring constantly. The whole goal is to cook the mixture so it doesn't taste like raw cocoa powder. This will take about 10 minutes, or until the mixture darkens and no longer tastes chalky. 

3. Remove from the heat and add in the 4 drops of stevia. 

4. You can enjoy it warm, or return it to the fridge to chill. Using the pour-able coconut milk will help prevent the pudding from separating or hardening when cold. 

I couldn't pick a name - faux-pioca doesn't have quite the right ring to it. I am calling it pretty darn delicious.