making instant puding with almond milk using agar - experiment 1

     did you know that you cant make instant pudding with almond milk? (or soy milk, or cashew milk, etc..)  i didnt.  i made some the other day and ended up with pudding soup, ugh.  why cant you?  it has to do with the way instant pudding works, the thickening process involves casein and that only exists in animal milks.  i did a bunch of looking up, but you can find a good explanation of this here.
     interestingly enough it seems that the ingredients in jello instant pudding bought in the usa and bought in canada have different ingredients, the canada pudding does not seem to contain the tetrasodium pyrophosphate explained in the link above but still does not work normally with almond milk.  (or maybe it's just listed differently?)

For reference:
Ingredients of Jello Pudding Instant Chocolate Fudge (from kraftrecipes.com): SUGAR, MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, COCOA PROCESSED WITH ALKALI, DISODIUM PHOSPHATE (FOR THICKENING), CONTAINS LESS THAN2% OF NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, TETRASODIUM PYROPHOSPHATE(FOR THICKENING), MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES (PREVENT FOAMING), RED40, YELLOW 5, BLUE 1, ARTIFICIAL COLOR, BHA (PRESERVATIVE).

Ingredients of Jello Instant Pudding, Chocolate from Canada (from on box): SUGAR, MODIFIED CORNSTARCH, COCOA, SODIUM PHOSPHATES, ARTIFICIAL AND NATURAL FLAVOUR, CORNSTARCH, SALT, COLOUR (CONTAINS TARTRAZINE), HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN OIL, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES. 

     one of the benefits of using almond milk instead of cow milk is the lower calories.  1 cup of unsweetened almond milk has 40 calories as opposed to 1 cup of 1% milk, which has 110.  this experiment added agar, i used a ratio of about 1.75%, which = about 8g, which is about 24 calories.  plus it tastes kinda good.

on to it!
     for this experiment i only had original almond milk, which is sweetened a bit and contains 60calories a cup  + a box of chocolate instant pudding & some agar powder.
the instructions say to add 2 cups of milk to the powder, mix for a few min. and refrigerate.

step #1.  heat 3/4 cup of almond milk in the microwave for 2min.
step #2.  add 3tsp of agar powder, add a bit at a time and whisk in to make sure it is mixed in well!
     *i may have miscalculated, but i figured that a ratio of 1.75% would give a good thickness, that equaled about 8g, plus that is what i had left, so.. works.*

step #3.  agar needs to be heated and i wanted to make sure that it worked so i reheated the milk for another 30sec.  this resulted in a thick milk mixture!  i was pretty pleased at this point thinking things were going to work well!

step #4.  i beat the thickened milk mix a bit just to make sure it was evenly mixed before adding anything else

step #5.  add the powder & the rest of the milk (1 and 1/3 cup).  and proceed as instructed on the box.

     this is where i went wrong.
i had kept the rest of the almond milk in the fridge this whole time and adding the cold milk to the thickened heated agar milk mixture instantly gelled it!  so it got clumpy!  this is what i was trying hard to avoid in the first place, ugh!  i tried beating it at high for a longer time but it still was clumpy.  (the clumps taste more like clumps of agar than clumps of extra thick chocolatey stuff, so kinda not so great)  oh well.

    it definitely resulted in a thick instant pudding though!  i just have to tweak the process a bit.  some thoughts:
- add room temp milk to the mix
- add a bit less agar
- dont microwave it the second time after mixing in the agar
maybe all 3?

    i will try some of these another time, but i am puddinged out for now.  plus i need to get some unsweetened almond milk, the original made the pudding way too sweet for my liking, yikes!~  but look how nice and thick it turned out!

    (different lighting makes it look a much different colour, yikes!)

there are other ways of making instant pudding with almond milk that i came across:
-you can do it with corn starch apparently, which looks promising. and kinda more easy if it works, however i have found using corn starch in other things (like pie filling) that it leaves an after taste, so who know!  also, i thought you had to heat corn starch for it to work too?  i am not sure and i do not feel like looking it up right now.
-i have also read that it works if you use only 1 cup of almond milk to the box of powder.  this seems icky to me because it would be super concentrated and you would get less servings/box.  also, it would be higher in calories, even using the almond milk at 40 calories/cup, you double the calories of the dry mix (100 calories per normal serving would now = 200 calories/serving for the dry mix alone).
-and i read that you can use part almond milk and part yogurt.  i have seen posted 1 cup almond milk, 1 cup yogurt also 1 cup almond milk, 0.5 cup yogurt.  you can use fat free plain yogurt,or some sort of super creamy yummy yogurt maybe vanilla or coconut!  it sounds really good actually!  i might try substituting 100% yogurt!

    anyway, that was my almond milk - instant pudding - agar experiment that sort of worked.