Today I made a super easy dessert: vegan strawberry and chocolate puddings, lactose-free and gluten-free, which you can prepare ahead of time and they turn out very tasty!

I served them with strawberries cut into pieces and left them to soften and sweeten further in a pan over very low heat.

Of course we can also add other fruits according to the season — for example, peaches (coming soon at the markets) go very well with chocolate, but so do kiwis or bananas!

It’s a homemade spoon dessert that’s very easy and can be made with different types of chocolate depending on your taste — a spoon dessert to keep in the fridge and decorate with a dollop of vegan cream and maybe a few mint leaves (my little mint plant is slowly regrowing and the one I had in the fridge… sadly had to be thrown away).

When I was young, pudding was a simple dessert my mother often made, even from boxed mixes, but now when I make sweets for an afternoon snack or after a meal I often end up making trifle or little truffles and only rarely puddings!

I’m not an expert on vegan doctrine, so I did a bit of research to answer some questions I was curious about…

Question: what do vegans eat?

Vegans eat fruits and vegetables, cereals and bread, seeds and nuts, and legumes.

What don’t vegans eat? People following this diet do not eat meat, fish, honey, cow’s milk and its derivatives, or eggs.

What alternatives do vegans have to replace meat and fish? There is seitan, obtained from wheat gluten; tempeh, produced by fermenting yellow soybeans; mopur; and wheat gluten-based ‘meat’ to make stews and roasts that are entirely plant-based!

What can replace cheese for vegans? It’s nutritional yeast flakes obtained from brewer’s yeast — the ‘cheesy’ ingredient used to sprinkle over various preparations, while chickpea hummus is used if you need to replace creamy cheese.

And instead of eggs, what can a vegan eat? If we mean whole eggs, we can use bananas, plant-based yogurt, or potato starch. If we mean egg whites, there’s aquafaba, the liquid from chickpeas, with which I made vegan meringues on the blog!

How to replace cow’s milk in a vegan diet?

There are many substitutes, now commonly called plant drinks: soy, millet, oat, and rice beverages, for example.

Products that may seem vegan but aren’t:

1) baking powder, because it’s sometimes mixed with an animal-derived stabilizer;

2) some wines and beers, because one filtration method uses isinglass, a special animal-derived gelatin that removes processing residues;

3) chocolate, which in dark varieties should be vegan, but milk powder or whey may be present in some chocolates;

4) some types of bread that may include lard or milk in the dough;

5) certain types of candies or chewing gums that sometimes contain animal gelatin (also called “gelatin”).

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I’ve already published these spoon desserts on the blog…