Finally, after much practice, I’ve perfected a quick and easy way to make delightful, homemade rice pudding.
Regular readers will know that Visit Fylde Coast began in 2010 and this story started in the summer of 2012. It was documented as ‘rice-pudding-gate’ in the pages of Chrissie’s Blog. Before we get to that, I’ll share the recipe!
Homemade Rice Pudding
Makes four generous portions, five at a push.
Rice Pudding Ingredients
- One pint of milk. Full fat or semi-skimmed is best, but skimmed will do.
- One of the very small tins of Evaporated Milk (that’s the runny one)
- Five ounces/tablespoons of pudding rice (found in the bakery aisle of large supermarkets). 125g in new money.
- Two tablespoons of sugar
How to make Homemade Rice Pudding
It’s really easy to make, there are a couple of ways to do it which cut down the cooking time from hours and hours in a cool oven.
One method couldn’t be any easier. Put it all in the dish at least about 3 hours before you want to cook it. Bake it in the oven for 30 minutes on 190C. Enjoy!
Or, you can do what I do and warm the milk up when assembling the ingredients. This makes a creamy, delicious pudding that cooks in no time at all. Here’s how:
Measure the pudding rice into a glass jug, top it up with about half of the milk. Warm it up in the microwave for about 3 minutes on full power.
Tip the rice/milk mixture into the dish with the sugar and evaporated milk. Pop the other half of the milk in the microwave for a couple of minutes. You’ll still need to do this about 2-3 hours in advance if you only want to cook it for half an hour.
We pop it in the oven about 15 minutes before we’re going to eat, on whatever temperature the oven is on. When our main course comes out of the oven we turn it down to about 160C (or you can turn it off). By the time the first course is eaten, the rice pudding is cooked to perfection!
This is another one of those easy make-do-and-mend recipes that you can make with more or less the right ingredients. We’ve made it with different milk, different quantities of evaporated milk and cooking it for different lengths of time. It’s rarely the same twice on the trot but that’s the beauty of home cooking!
Other sweet and cheap recipes to try:
Grandma’s Rice Pudding
My grandma had a coal oven and made my granddad a rice pudding every day for his lunch when he came home from working down the pit. The coal oven butted up to the coal fire in the living room. Simply by adjusting the number of lumps of coal on the fire in the living room, she controlled the temperature to cook the most divine roasts and lightest of cakes.
True to the past, I bought a regulation white enamel dish with a blue line round the edge. Next, I got all the ingredients together and set about making my grandma’s rice pudding from a distant memory. Because in those days recipes weren’t ever written down!
Rice Pudding-Gate
We buy skimmed milk and the first one I made was solid and tasteless. I’d made it with skimmed milk and used far too much rice. It had to be cut with a knife and came out of the dish in four solid, barely eatable squares. After a good laugh, round one was declared a disaster.
Then I bought a pint of full fat milk (which made me wrinkle my nose) to make rice pudding number two. I’d used considerably less rice this time, but it was left in the oven for too long. So the rice had absorbed all the milk and pudding number two was also solid. Although not quite as hard as attempt number one!
Determined not to make the same mistake again, number three was too wet because I’d used less rice and a shorter cooking time.
After continual cries of ‘she used Carnation Milk’ from Chrissie. ie grandma always used Carnation (evaporated) Milk, I eventually succeeded on attempt number four!
Quick and Tasty
Since this saga started in the summer of 2012, I’ve perfected the technique which we’ve shared with you. We regularly enjoy delightful, home made rice pudding, for barely minimal effort and cooking time.
The trick is to allow the rice to absorb the milk and soften before it goes in the oven. Then you can just push it in with whatever you are having for lunch and cook it in half an hour instead of two!
There’s a funny footnote:
I always admired my grandma’s rice pudding. In it’s enamel dish it looked yummy, with it’s beautiful brown skin on top – a testament to home baking at its best. Strangely, it was only ever fed to my granddad though, and no one else ever shared it. I wonder why?
I later found out that for a number of years she’d actually been using tinned rice pudding and passing it off as her own! She added a bit of sugar and baked it in the oven instead warming it in a pan!
If you can’t get hold of any pudding rice right now you could always try the timmed-pudding-pass-off!
Have a go and let us know how you go on. Have you got any tips and additions to add? Leave them in the comments below. Bet you can tell the difference between homemade and tinned!
Why don’t you check out Trevors Foodservice – it’s the large, back-stage business that’s quietly feeding the Fylde Coast! They’re Blackpool’s number one wholesaler of chilled, frozen and ambient foods. And also sell cleaning materials, catering disposables and equipment.
The family firm was first established in Blackpool in 1962. It sells branded products and their Country Range, specially made for the 12-member buying group which Trevors is part of.
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