Kyl Haselbauer has 20 years of experience working in fine-dining and modernist kitchens, including Bar Cotto and Anchovies &amp; Olives in Seattle. He is also the owner of Bright Spot, a café and coffee shop in Seattle.

Kyl Haselbauer

Sweet and creamy, this vegan coffee pudding hits like a refreshing iced coffee on a summer day.
 
When I developed my simple, egg-free chocolate custard, I noted that you could easily turn it into pudding if you messed up while unmolding it, transforming a potential disaster into something just as delicious to eat. The reason that works is because of the magic of low-acyl gellan gum, a <a href="https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/unlock-your-hydrocolloid-starter-pack">powerful hydrocolloid</a> that will thicken any liquid to produce a gel that has a silky, creamy, and luscious texture with near-imperceptible effects on the flavor of the liquid.Instead of just letting you figure it out on your own, I tweaked the process and dialed in ingredient quantities to show you how to harness the full potential of gellan to make perfectly textured, stable puddings with undiluted flavor. Because it’s such a powerful gelling agent, you have to be a little careful about how much gellan you add to any liquid. A little goes a very long way, so you’re definitely going to want to use a jeweler’s scale—accurate to 1/10th of a gram—to measure out the quantity. And while you can take my egg-free chocolate custard and transform it into a pudding, you can’t take this pudding and make a sliceable custard. That’s because a gel that incorporates chocolate—and its high proportion of cocoa butter—will produce a firmer consistency. To underscore gellan’s ability to make puddings with bright, clean, and clear flavors, this recipe uses coconut oil, which also means the resulting pudding will have set to a softer state. Not great for sliceable custards, but ideal for a pudding.The recipe calls for brewed French press coffee, but any kind of coffee will work. Just keep in mind that there’s nothing to mask the flavor of the coffee in this recipe; better coffee means a better pudding.

Creamy Vegan Coffee Pudding