Healthy Rice Pudding (Vegan)

4.89 from 17 votes

This healthy rice pudding recipe is a perfect, lightened-up version of the creamy rice pudding recipe you grew up loving. It's vegan, gluten-free, and refined sugar-free and is hands down the perfect hearty dessert!

Prep Time5

Cook Time50

Total Time55

Servings:

Author: Lexi

Ingredients

1/2 cup jasmine rice rinsed well and drained
4 cups boxed coconut milk beverage or almond milk
2 - 3" cinnamon sticks
Pinch fine sea salt
1/4 cup maple sugar see notes for sub
1/2 cup raisins
cinnamon to garnish

Instructions

In a medium sauce pan (see note), add rinsed and drained rice and add water just enough to cover the rice. Heat pan on medium. Once rice has reached a boil, turn heat to medium low and let water reduce for 10 minutes, or sooner if the liquid has already evaporated. Take care not to let the water evaporate out completely. If there is any excess water at the end of 10 minutes, drain it out.
Add coconut milk, cinnamon sticks and salt and bring up to a gentle simmer on medium to medium-low heat. Simmer, uncovered, for 25 minutes and stir the pan every few minutes to make sure the rice does not stick.
Add raisins and sugar, and turn the heat to low. Cook for an additional 15 minutes, uncovered, stirring frequently, until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid and it has thickened up.
Remove the cinnamon sticks. Serve warm or cold, with ground cinnamon sprinkled on top.

Notes

Make sure you are using the cartoon of the coconut milk beverage and not the canned variety. Alternatively you can use a different milk-of-choice such as almond or oat.

You can substitute maple sugar for coconut sugar but will change color slightly.

For our recipe we used a medium saucepan. Depending on the size pan you use, it may take less or more time for the liquid to evaporate.

Rice pudding will keep well in the refrigerator for up to two days. To reheat, place back in a saucepan with a touch of milk and heat on low until hot.

Update on 10/2018: After receiving comments that this recipe yielded rice pudding that was more liquid-y than readers expected, we went back and tested this recipe completely as written, with different pots and on different stovetops, and we can say 100% this recipe works if followed as written and resulted in rice pudding that was thick and creamy like you see here in the photos. If for some reason your rice pudding is taking more time to evaporate than the direction indicates, simply let the rice pudding evaporate for a bit more time. Also note that as the rice pudding cools it thickens up quite a bit as well, so don't overcook it! We stand by our ratio to 1/2 cup of rice to 4 cups of liquid, which results in a thickened and creamy rice pudding. Our advice always is that if it isn't thick enough for you for whatever reason, then keep cooking. Evaporation will do its job and thicken it up eventually as the liquid is cooked off.

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