Healthy and easy brown rice coconut pudding! Made with only 5 ingredients (excluding water and salt) in a slow cooker, it is both vegan and gluten-free.

People fall into two camps with rice pudding: love or hate.

I am squarely in the love camp.

But I’ve made a discovery: if the aforementioned haters like oatmeal, and they are served the same rice pudding for breakfast, they move–or at least take several significant steps–over to the love camp.

So, for the time, being, let’s forget about calling this dessert. This super-simple, hands-free brown rice wonder is a breakfast for champions: rich, yet frugal, and nutritious, yet delicious.

Here’s how you make it: throw all of the ingredients in a slow cooker and walk away. A few hours later, you have this:

One essential characteristic of any worthy rice pudding is creaminess: it should have a silky richness without being soupy. The rice should be plump and tender, too. That’s why this rendition needs to go on your must-make list.

It’s not too sweet either: both the brown rice and coconut milk have a natural sweetness, so roughly two tablespoons of added sweetener is all that’s needed. I used coconut sugar, but any sweetener will do; you can even use stevia, if that’s your preference.

I am fond of the convenience of dried fruit, but feel free to omit it and top with seasonal fresh fruits. I can attest that summer blackberries and chunky, autumn-spiced applesauce are equally spoon-worthy toppings.

Since I cannot leave well enough alone, I also used this recipe to make a portable, baked rice pudding cup. The world needs portable, pack-able rice pudding. The pucks only require half of the rice pudding recipe, so you can eat some pudding now and make pucks later.

You are so welcome :).

Healthy Coconut Brown Rice Pudding {vegan, gluten-free, 5 ingredients}

Author: Camilla

Description

Healthy and easy brown rice coconut pudding! Made with only 5 ingredients (excluding water and salt) in a slow cooker, it is both vegan and gluten-free.

Scale

Ingredients

1 cup medium or short-grain brown rice
1 14-ounce can lite coconut milk
2–1/4 cups water
2 tablespoons coconut sugar or sweetener of choice
1 teaspoon ground cardamom (or ginger or cinnamon)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/2 cup chopped dried fruit (I used apricots and cranberries)

Instructions

Stir together all of the the ingredients in a slow cooker.
Cook on low setting for 3-1/2 to 4 hours until the brown rice grains are plump and tender and almost all of the liquid is absorbed. Serve warm or cool completely.