Baked Custard Rice Pudding - Crazy Ingredient Challenge

Custard Rice Pudding topped with Ice Cream

I just had the busiest but most fun weekend and need to sleep for about a week to allow my body to recover. This weekend was proof that  maybe, just maybe, I am not as young as I pretend to be. Back in undergrad, weekends like this were the norm. You did it every weekend and felt no different the morning after. But hello, "old age"!

So what did I do? I didn't sleep much on Wednesday night, partly because I became obsessed with a new game but mostly because I was anxious about something. Thursday was a long day of travel and the night was spent at my friend's bridal shower. Fun times but that was another very late night. I think I went to bed around 2am. Friday should have been an easy day but it turned into a lot of running around and another 2 am bedtime. Saturday was the wedding and you guessed it, back to bed at 2 am. Now, going to bed at 2 am wouldn't be so bad if my body wasn't programmed to wake up around 4:30 or so. By the time, I fell asleep again, it was time to wake up for the day. Sunday morning I went to a christening and a brunch then headed home.

A really great weekend that my hurried words don't give any justice to but I am trying to get to the point of this post and this post is LATE. I am blaming it on bad planning and being too busy dealing with my nephew yesterday. He hadn't seen me since Wednesday and he had to make up for all the lost Aunty time.

This month, rice and nutmeg won the Crazy Ingredient Challenge poll. My first thought was rice pudding. I always wanted to try it but I have a bit of a mental block against sweetened rice. I did try horchata and it was way better than I expected so there was hope for rice pudding. I talked myself out of it several times and came up with a few baked dishes that involved my favourite ingredient - flour - but in the end, I had no time so it was back to rice pudding.

I decided to try a baked custard version instead of cooking it on the stove. And I slightly regret that. This custard is not as creamy as I would have liked and I can see the rice grains. I don't want to see the rice grains. I did think of blending the mixture but opted not to. That would have taken care of that issue. The flavour is great though and I just have to overcome my mental block against sweetened rice and seeing the rice grains won't make a difference. Too late to blend them now.

Baked Custard Rice Pudding

Yield - 3 1/2 cup servings

Ingredients

1 cup plus 8 teaspoons milk

1 egg

1/3 cup cooked rice

8 teaspoons granulated sugar

8 teaspoons raisins (soak in rum, if possible)

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

a pinch of salt

a splash of vanilla

a splash or two of rum

Directions

Preheat oven to 300 F. Grease 3 half cup capacity ramekins.

Mix all the ingredients together and pour into ramekins. Alternatively, you can blend all but the raisins then stir in the raisins.

Bake in water bath for 20 minutes or until the custard is set.

Serve warm or chilled with whipped cream. I topped mine with ice cream. 

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