If there were only one recipe I could pass down to my kids from the family collection, it would be this one (once I get it right, which I think I have now). Rice pudding, for me, is the ultimate comfort food that takes me straight back to my mother’s kitchen, every time I make it.

I’ve also got a bit of a history with rice pudding, so stick around for my Nicole’s notes, if you’re up for a read. Anyway, I’ve been tinkering away with Mom’s baked rice pudding recipe (I have locked down the stovetop version already) because I keep seeming to fail on a scale of edible-to-miserably. I decided to have another go after several years and I think I’ve figured out four key things that were wrong with it:

• First: and most importantly, the baked recipe needs UNCOOKED rice.
• Second: to fill the casserole dish and get a nice thick, creamy pudding, you need more volume, so I’ve doubled the recipe and added a cup of soy milk for a richer texture.
• Third: You have to stir the pudding in the first 1-1 1/2 hours to prevent too thick of a skin forming on top. The skin is a yummy feature because it sort of caramelizes the top, but there can be too much of a good thing.
• Fourth: this pudding can verge into sickenly sweet territory – I’ve pulled back the sugar and raisins mom’s recipe called for and suggested some optional ingredients to add some depth and complexity.

The picture below is missing a few of my tinkers. I will add a new picture when I make it next time. We are getting so close to perfection.

Ingredients

• 1 cup short grain white rice (uncooked) – Arborio is divine, but Mom always used regular short-grain
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 8 cups soy milk
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 2/3 cup raisins
• OPTIONAL: 1 tsp finely grated orange zest
• OPTIONAL: 1/4 tsp cardamom

Yield: 6-10 servings

Preheat oven to 300^o.

Mix all ingredients together in a large (9×13) baking dish. The optional ingredients are to add a little more complexity to the flavour but Mom’s recipe never included them.

Stir every 30 minutes for the first 90 mins, then leave it alone for another 45-60 minutes so a light golden top can form at the end. You’ll know it’s time to take it out when the rice is completely tender and the pudding is creamy but still slightly loose. The pudding will thicken a bit more while it cools.

Notes: The first time I tried this, it was an edible failure. I assumed cooked rice when in fact, it needs uncooked rice (mom’s recipe didn’t specify). Also, stirring will help prevent a thick skin from forming on top. Stirring at regular intervals for the first 1.5 hours will keep the top a more delicious texture.

Nicole’s Notes

If at first you don’t succeed…

Grandma’s cookbook has three recipes for rice pudding. I had originally been thinking I would blog all three, but the baked version (in mom’s handwriting) was an edible failure. The rice-to-wet-ingredients ratio seemed off to me but I decided to trust the recipe for the most part and… I baked the pudding basically to oblivion.

The other recipe (typewritten by grandma) calls for making it in the microwave and using a mix of white and brown rice. First, cooking with a microwave is finicky and not super congruent with my views on cooking. Second, and probably more importantly, who has the time or patience to cook 2 different types of rice?? No thanks. I’m guessing that this was created during grandma’s health kick phase (all her recipes on orange paper seem to be from that time).

My history of rice pudding making

I lived in Mexico for the year in 2005, teaching Psychology and History of Art at a private high school. I had my own little apartment where I lived alone for the first time in my life. I had a pet rabbit named Besito to keep me company and became friends with one of the most lovely and generous women I’ve ever met. We got on so well, when we were together we referred to me as “the Canadian Claudia” and her, “the Mexican Nicole.”

My only transportation in the very car-commuter city was foot, taxi or Claudia. So, because we typically only saw each other on weekends, I spent a lot of time alone. Work, Besito and a very large amount of art supplies didn’t seem to be enough stimulation for me… so take this into consideration when I tell you this sort of bizarre story about how I ate only rice pudding for at least 3 weeks straight.

I decided I wanted to figure out how to make rice pudding without reading a recipe. So bought a bunch of rice, milk, eggs, cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg. My first few batches had to be cut them with a knife. A sort of sweet, dense, rice loaf. But I’d made so much of it and refused to waste it – I stubbornly refused to eat anything else.

My friends got wind of my project and started being my test subjects for each new batch – probably worried I would get scurvy or something and volunteered themselves to be my test subjects to help save me from myself. A sign of some very good friends. I’m not sure I ever landed on a particularly delicious recipe – if I did, I didn’t write it down.

Anyway, so when I think of rice pudding – as I said above, the first place I am transported to is back to my mother’s kitchen. But I also transported back to my little kitchen in Mexico and my friendship with the ever-effervescent Mexican Nicole.

As a post-note to this story, I might have stayed in Mexico at least one more year, but came back to Canada in hurry in December 2005 after my mother’s heart attack. That December forever changed the course of both of our lives. My mother’s, for the obvious reason that she would live out her remaining days with the effects of cardiac failure – and me, because abruptly giving up my teaching contract set me free to go wherever I wanted – and I decided to take the very few of my possessions… to Toronto.