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!
