Friday 26 August 2011

We should cocoa - chocolate rose rice pudding

Well, it's the end of the month, and this month Choclette set us the challenge of using rose with chocolate. I have seen lots of  lovely looking cakes popping up all over the place, but lots of people saying they weren't sure what to make. I have to admit that I am definitely in the 'don't know how to pair rose and chocolate' camp on this one! Definitely a challenge.

I was going to make a dark chocolate rose cake, and in fact I did indeed do this, but unfortunately it was such a disaster that I can't bring myself to even show you a photo of my failure. Shall we just say that me, yogurt and cakes don't always mix. Sometimes they turn out really well, and occasionally they are an utter disaster. So it was back to the drawing board on this challenge.

I decided that instead of doing a cake, I would do a quick mid-week dessert. This definitely still needs some work on it, but has the potential to be repeated, so I am going to enter it for the challenge.


I used to love rice pudding as a child, and especially when it was thick and gungy, baked for ages in the oven and coming out with a golden nutmeggy skin. Yum. However, not right for this challenge, and not achievable for dinner on a week night when you're home late from work in need of comfort food. I decided to take the quick route. Flaked rice is something I've often seen in the supermarkets but have never bought or cooked with, but since it promised to be ready after only 12 minutes cooking it seemed the perfect contender!

The amount I made was rather less than I expected. From memory, 2oz of rice swelled magically in the milk to give enough rice pudding for 4 people, so I used 1/2 oz, or 12g for my rice dessert. There really wasn't very much of it!



Chocolate rose rice pudding
Ingredients
12g flaked rice
150ml rice milk
1/2 tsp rosewater
1 tsp caster sugar
chocolate to taste

Method
Place rice, milk, sugar and rosewater in a small pan. Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer and continue to cook, stirring for around 12-15 minutes until the rice is thick and gelatinous and the milk has been absorbed. Stir in the chocolate to turn your pudding a lovely chocolate shade!

Eat!

Pretty simple, and pretty tasty. The pudding was quite soft when warm but quickly became very thick when it cooled, so I think I should have added more liquid. I have to say that I couldn't really taste the rose, but I could definitely smell it whilst this was cooking. Perhaps my taste buds don't work?!! This reminded me of the chocolate semolina pudding I used to have as a child, which always set solid, yum! It made a nice change from making something cake related too!

15 comments:

Alicia Foodycat said...

It's not your most photogenic post! But the flavours sound delicious. I do love warm rice pudding.

Janice said...

Sorry your cake didn't work out. I made a chocolate rice pudding for a Nigella Challenge and it looked pretty rubbish too, but it tasted great. Glad you enjoyed it, even if there wasn't much there!

Johanna GGG said...

I fell into the don't have a clue camp but admire the ways people have been using chocolate and rose - this pudding is inspired - nice mid week warmer

Chele said...

I had to admit that when this month's challenge was set I never in a million years would have thought of rice pudding. Kudos to you! I bet it tastes amazing (but sorry to hear about your cake too!)

Unknown said...

what an inspired idea!... I love it!

Caroline said...

Foodycat - yep, brown mush looks pretty much like brown mush! Fairly tasty though :-)

Janice - thanks! Next time I'll make more!

Johanna - I think rose has been a very difficult one. I still think turkish delight is the best use for rosewater!

Chele - I think it needs some tweaking before I call it amazing, but it was an interesting experiment!

Dom - thanks!

Suelle said...

Shame about the cake! The rice pudding sounds delicious, but it would be grounds for divorce if I asked Hubs to eat rice pudding!

For some reason you blog isn't updating on my blog list, so I've missed some of your posts lately. I'll have to check what else I've missed.

Anonymous said...

C, my husband loves rice pudding, but I have to admit being Chinese that sweet rice isn't something I grew up on! Sounds like an intriguing combination of flavours nonetheless! :)

The Caked Crusader said...

My hit and miss type of cake is a sponge cake with virtually no butter where you have to whip up the eggs and fold in other ingredients. We can't have success all the time!

Like the idea of adding chocolate to rice pudding - makes it that extra bit comforting!

Caroline said...

Suelle - what a shame hubs won't eat rice pudding, I guess semolina's off the menu too then ;-)

Celia - it's odd how different cultures use different grains isn't it - I think that for many many years rice pudding was the only kind of rice eaten in the UK! In the same way that until Elizabeth David and other writers started talking about proper pasta, the only kind people ever ate was tinned spaghetti!

CC - I'm glad I'm not the only one to have hit-and-miss recipes, it makes me feel better that others sometimes have failures too!

Katie said...

This sounds wonderfully sophisticated. I love the pairing of rose and chocolate and with the creamy rice pudding it sounds divine

Choclette said...

Great idea C. Why haven't I thought of chocolate rice pudding before? And combined with rose too, I'm going to have to try this out for sure. I make chocolate porridge sometimes when I want something chocolatey, warming and quick, but this is far more sophisticated. I'm finding, I have to be more heavy handed with rosewater than I'd have thought for the taste to really come through. Thanks for taking part.

girls who like to gorge said...

A turkish delight type of rice pudding? Sounds great to me!

Baking Addict said...

I was stumped by this challenge too. I'd never have thought of rice pudding - great idea!

Anonymous said...

Sounds lovely to me. The perfect end to a meal.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...