pudding recipe – A True Love of Mine

The Rice Pudding Wars

I seem to be accruing cooking magazines at an exponential rate. They come home with me, then sit on the coffee table for weeks until they get stacked on top of all the other cooking magazines in random places around the house. Under the desk, on top of books on the shelves, under the bed, in the closet… oh dear. I do flip through and ooh and ahh at the pictures thinking how i’d love to try cooking xyz. Somehow, I never seem to get my act together. Until now…

With the sudden chill factor, I couldn’t go past the rice pudding recipe in this month’s Delicious magazine (which I love!). I did think that 1.2 L milk to 1/3 cup rice was a little excessive, but, its Delicious! Who was I to question such authority? Damn right, thats what I was.

I ended up with a very tasty rice soup. Looks a bit like an omelette…

However, I do like my rice pudding more… well… puddingy! So I began to search for a good pudding recipe. Luckily, I didn’t have to look too far! I went straight to the Australian Women’s Weekly cookbook and tried their rice pudding. I substituted the cup of skim milk for a cup of cream (If you’re eating rice pudding you cant be worrying about your waistline!) popped it in the oven and crossed my fingers.

Looks good so far, no excessive liquid

Hooray! I can see the rice!

It was so so tasty, and with a little bit of cinnamon on top… mmmmmmm!

Be careful though, keep it stored with the silver foil over the top as it did develop a little bit of a skin. Im not sure if it was the cream substitution, but it still tasted good the next day so a little bit of a skin was no worry. Don’t worry Delicious! I still love you! But AWW did win this round, you’re going to have to pull something pretty special out of the bag next time…

So my lovelies, what is your favourite dessert to warm you up on a cold winters night?

Rice Pudding – From The Australian Women’s Weekly Cookbook

Ingredients

1/2 cup (100g) medium grain rice (I used arborio rice)

2 cups (500ml) full cream milk

250 ml thickened cream (you can use skim milk if you want, but why?)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup (55g) caster sugar

Method

1. Rinse the rice under cold water and spread on the bottom of a shallow, 1 litre baking dish

2. Combine the milk, cream, vanilla and sugar in a saucepan and bring to a boil

3. Pour the hot milk mixture over the rice and mix gently with a fork

4. Cover the dish tightly with silver foil, bake for 1 1/4 hours at 150 degrees celsius

Chocolate Pear Pudding

So its definitely onesie weather! When its this cold you absolutely need a warm dessert to round off a meal and let your body know its time to wind down to go to bed. And who knows how to make a quick, warm, comforting dessert better than anyone? Nigella does. After a dinner of roasted veggies, I thought i’d try the Chocolate Pear Pudding from the Nigella Express cookbook. Partly because I love the chocolate/pear combination, mostly because I wanted something super quick and easy! (And also I think the little pear halves look really cute laid out on the bottom of the pan!)

Look! Pear bums!

True to the book it came from, this recipe is truly a scrumptious dessert made the express way. I was worried that the cake batter was too thick to produce a moist cake but, trust in Nigella, for only she can show you the true way to amazing desserts. (Don’t worry, I haven’t lost faith in The Saint, but Nigella really is the queen of the quickie dessert.)

Daring Bakers’ English Pudding Challenge (April 2010)

The April 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

I bought my first pudding basin last christmas because I had been charged with the task of making the Christmas Pudding. Now, I absolutely loathe the traditional fruit pudding so I figured that I would make it the only way I KNEW I would like it. With chocolate. Not traditional but very tasty!

I was very excited when I saw that my very first challenge with the Daring Bakers would allow me to use my pudding basin again. Ive never used suet, ive never steamed a dessert, in fact, im not really sure ive ever steamed anything. All ingredients and cooking methods I was new to. Bring it on!

I decided to make the Sussex Pond Pudding as I love lemons and the lemons are looking particularly lovely this season. The idea of steaming a pudding with a whole fruit inside it was also intriguing. I began by sourcing suet mix, which I found at my local supermarket in a box in the baking aisle.

I made the suet pastry according to the instructions on the box. very easy and straight forward.

Lined my pudding basin. (Yes I used kitchen scissors to trim the pastry!)

Added the cubed butter and demerera sugar

Look! A lemon!

Hid the lemon below lots more butter and sugar (possibly a little more than required by the recipe, but since when has extra butter and sugar been anything but good?)

Pop the lid on!

This part I thought would be very difficult, but it turned out pleating the foil and tying it with string was quite easy. My basin didn’t have a lip on it but the string never failed.

I made an impromptu trivet out of scrunched up aluminium foil and plunged by pudding into the boiling water!

My pud! After 3 and a half hours of steaming. To be honest, I would probably steam it for another couple of hour as its not as golden as I would like.

Another pud! Actually its the same one but de-basined. MMMmmmm….

You can see the lemon in the middle there! Oozing lemony sugary sauce….

Overall, it turned out ok. Some of the pudding was absolutely amazing. The pastry was flaky and tasty with some beautiful lemony sweet sauce. The only problem was that parts of the lemon turned out quite bitter and that tended to overpower the sweetness of the dish. I think that could be overcome by steaming the pud for a few more hours.

While I havent been able to post any more of my pudding attempts, this challenge has certainly inspired me to get creative in the kitchen. Expect more puds, savoury and sweet, large and small over the coming weeks! This was a great challenge that introduced me to many things i’d never think of trying on my own. Thanks Esther, for a truly inspiring challenge!!

So my lovelies, what puddings have you tried to make? Did they work? I think my next attempt is going to be this Very Chocolate Pudding. Just for something different…

Sussex Pond Pudding Recipe – As seen at The Daring Kitchen

Ingredients

1 box suet mix

120g Demerera Sugar

120g Unsalted Butter

1 Large Lemon (try to get unwaxed and thin skinned lemons)

Method

1. Make the pastry according to the instructions on the box

2. Grease your pudding basin with butter and line it with the pastry

3. Cut the butter into small cubes and place half in the basin and cover with half the sugar

4. Wash and dry your lemon, and place it on top of the butter and sugar

5. Cover with the rest of the butter and sugar

6. Cut a disc out of the remaining pastry and cover the pudding filling, folding around the edges of the pastry in order to seal it well

7. Steam for 3.5 hours (I would probably try steaming it for another couple of hours next time)

MAKE SURE YOUR POT DOES NOT BOIL DRY!

8. When you invert your pudding basin to get your pudding out, make sure you do it in a rimmed dish as the sauce may leak out

9. Enjoy!