This Banana Chia Pudding is the best healthy vegan breakfast for banana lovers. A creamy banana pudding with layers of fresh coconut yogurt, banana slices, and peanut butter.
What’s A Banana Chia Seed Pudding?
A chia seed pudding is a 3-ingredient healthy vegan breakfast made of chia seeds, plant-based milk, and sweetener.
It’s a healthy alternative to oatmeal, flaxseed pudding, or overnight oats recipes for breakfast. Also, chia puddings are paleo, grain-free, and low in carbs.
This banana chia seed pudding is a flavored version of the classic chia pudding, adding fresh banana pieces and a few spices to flavor it.
Expert Tips To Make The Best Chia Pudding With Bananas
Tip #1: The key to making a delicious banana pudding is choosing a fresh yellow banana. Don’t use ripe bananas in chia pudding, or the pudding will turn grey and dark in color, and the banana flavor will be too strong.
Tip #2: Add an acid ingredient like lemon juice or lime juice to prevent the bananas from darkening too much in the pudding.
Tip #3: Use white chia seeds if you can find them. They make the pudding color lighter.
Tip #4: Blend everything together to remove the lumpy texture of the seeds. It’s a technique I used in my chocolate peanut butter chia seed pudding.
Tip #5: If you didn’t blend the pudding, place the filled pudding jars in the fridge and refrigerate for 20 minutes. After that time, open the jar and give a good stir to avoid the seeds from clumping together or gravitating to the bottom of your jar.
Ingredients and Substitutions
Below, I will give you all my tips and tricks to make the best banana chia pudding. If you want to see the recipe measurements, jump to the recipe below!
The ingredients you need to make this healthy chia banana pudding are simple:
- Large Yellow Banana – Yellow with no or very few black spots on the skin to avoid a dark pudding.
- Chia Seeds – White or black chia seeds work well. I prefer the white chia seeds to keep the color of this banana chia pudding recipe light.
- Unsweetened Coconut Milk – Any plant-based milk will work here, but I found the flavor of coconut milk delicious with banana. You can also try oat milk or almond milk.
- Maple Syrup – This is optional, but if you have a sweet tooth, adding a touch of maple syrup brings out the sweeteners of the banana, and you will love the light maple flavor it also adds to the recipe.
- Vanilla Extract – It’s optional, but any pudding is better with a hint of vanilla!
- Lemon Juice to slow down the oxidation of the bananas.
Making The Pudding
- First, prepare a tall glass mason jar with a volume of about 2 cups (500ml) with a sealed lid. Choose your method: the blended method requires a blender.
- Otherwise, peel the banana and mash it roughly with a fork in a large mixing bowl. Stir in the remaining ingredients: chia seeds, plant-based milk, vanilla extract, lemon juice, and maple syrup. To make a banana peanut butter chia pudding, stir 2 tablespoons of drippy peanut butter in the jar.
- Finally, transfer the pudding in the jars,. I like to create layers of banana chia pudding, coconut yogurt, and pieces of my no-bake peanut butter cookies. Close the jar’s lid, and keep in the fridge for 3 hours or overnight.
Banana Chia Pudding Flavors
Chia puddings are perfect for meal prepping a week of healthy vegan breakfast. They are also very versatile, meaning that you can add only 1 or 2 ingredients to this recipe to create amazing new flavors!
- Peanut Butter Banana Chia Pudding – Stir in 2 tablespoons of peanut butter in the jar along with the banana, maple syrup, and vanilla. Then, add almond milk and chia seeds.
- Banana Chocolate Chia Pudding – Stir in 1 1/2 tablespoons of cocoa powder to the jar, just before adding the chia seeds.
- Banana Coconut Pudding – Use canned coconut milk, and add 2 tablespoons of unsweetened shredded coconut to the jar.
Serving Banana Chia Pudding
A chia seed pudding is even better served with lots of toppings.
Always add the toppings just before serving, not the day before. Below I listed my favorite vegan toppings that go very well with this banana chia seed pudding recipe.
- Nut Butter – Add a drizzle of your favorite nut butter on top of the pudding. Almond butter, cashew butter, or my favorite combo: peanut butter, banana, and chia!
- Fruits – Sliced bananas, fresh or frozen raspberries, blueberries, or strawberries. All these fruits go well with this chia banana pudding with almond milk.
- Nuts – Sprinkle roasted peanuts, sliced almonds, crushed pecans, or walnuts.
- Seeds – Add plant-based proteins to your pudding by adding some hemp seeds, sunflower seeds, or sesame seeds.
- Coconut – Toasted coconut flakes or shredded coconut marry very well with bananas.
- Chocolate – A drizzle of melted dark chocolate or chunks of 85% cocoa chocolate.
Frequently Asked Questions
vegan diet. In fact, chia seeds’ nutritional properties are complete.
Two tablespoons of chia seeds will bring you:
– 17% RDI in calcium.
– 10 grams of fiber – the daily recommendation is about 30 grams.
– 12% RDI iron.
– 23% RDI magnesium.
– 9 grams of fat – they are full-fat seeds but a good kind of fat, mostly polyunsaturated fat.
Plus, chia pudding is whole30-compliant, low-carb, and keto-friendly, if not made with banana, of course. It’s the perfect addition to any healthy meal plan to start the day with energy!
This banana chia pudding is very similar to tapioca puddings in texture.
It is fresh, creamy, with slimy little pieces of chia seeds. It has a delicious maple banana flavor.
More Healthy Vegan Breakfasts
I love starting the day with a healthy breakfast high in plant-based protein and fiber to feel full and stabilize my blood sugar level.
Below I listed my favorite easy vegan breakfast to try:
Did You Like This Recipe?
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Banana Chia Seed Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 Large Banana - yellow, soft but no black spots on the skin
- 1 cup Almond Milk - (note 1)
- ¼ cup Chia Seeds - (note 2)
- 1 tablespoon Maple Syrup - (note 3)
- ½ teaspoon Vanilla Extract
- 2 teaspoon Lemon Juice - (note 4)
Optional flavoring
- ¼ teaspoon Cinnamon - optional
- 2 tablespoons Peanut Butter (Unsalted) - optional for a peanut butter banana version!
Instructions
- Before you start, prepare a 2-cup glass mason jar with a lid. Clean, sterilize with boiling water, and dry.
- Place all the ingredients in a blender. Blend until smooth, or if you don't have a blender, follow the instructions in the note 5.
- Transfer the blended banana pudding into glass mason jar, with layers of coconut yogurt and crunched vegan shortbread until you reach the top of the jar
- Close the jar, and place it in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours to thicken, or overnight.
- Serve with layers of sliced banana and coconut yogurt or plain with toppings: toasted peanuts, a drizzle of almond/peanut butter, raspberries, etc.
Love this recipe. I use almond milk, a bit of cardamom, and honey (because I don’t have maple syrup). This is delicious and a small serving (as little as 6 oz) fills you up.
I tend to have a sweet tooth in the afternoon so I made this for my snack today and it was perfect! I skipped the maple syrup and included raw almond butter since I love the banana-almond combo. So easy and delicious!
This is not a Whole30 recipe. Chia Seed Puddings are specifically Labeled an non-compliant on the Whole30 website. Please remove the Whole30 label/copy on this page, now that you know better it would be irresponsible not to correct the error.
As you can read on the whole30 website, chia seeds are totally fine! I quote “These “seeds” aren’t the same botanical family of seeds that we eliminate with grains and legumes, so that makes them fine to eat during your Whole30.. This said, feel free to not eat chia seeds on your own term. Enjoy the recipes.
Hi Carine & Damien,
I am so glad to find recipes not including sugar. I have baked for many years, but now my family & I are trying to get away from refined sugar. Can you tell me how to replace sugar with stevia in pies, cookies & cake recipes? I feel totally lost because no one I know uses Stevia in their dessert recipes. It is hard to do better when you don’t know how!!! Any information you can give me will be much appreciated.
It pretty much depends on the recipe, if it’s a bread, cookie or cake recipe then sugar is often used for texture so stevia drops won’t work but instead you can always swap for same amount of erythritol – a granulated natural sugar-free sweetener. Maple syrup can be replaced by liquid monk fruit sweetener in no-bake recipes. Finally, I would use stevia drops only for drinks – smoothie or coffee. I hope it helps,
What is drippy peanut butter
It’s simply natural peanut butter, fresh from the jar
This was my first time ever trying chia seed pudding. I was nervous I wouldn’t like it but I loved it!! Thank you for this recipe! I warmed my pudding up after opening in the morning. It was delicious!
Giving ides for toppings
Gave me a wide range ideas as whys to use nu-tritunon. Thanks
Grinding the chia seeds makes it a nice smooth pudding. I’ve made a chocolate pudding like this and it was great as well.
I agree but it gives a grey brown color to banana pudding that is not appealing but it work well if you add cocoa powder to the mix!