As I've mentioned, I'm needing to restrict my grains to primarily brown rice for the time being. I told a good friend that I was making and eating a lot of baked rice pudding, using my mother's 1950s-era recipe. My friend asked if I could give her this recipe. I thought perhaps this recipe was on my blog, but I couldn't locate it. Perhaps I was just thinking of posting it and never did.
Anyway, I thought I'd share, as this really is a delicious, frugal, simple, and gluten-free dessert that the whole family can enjoy.
Baked Rice Custard
2 well-beaten eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups milk
1 1/4 cup cooked, cooled rice (I use brown rice)
1 cup raisins, optional
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Dash cinnamon
Dash nutmeg
Oven 325 degrees F
Combine eggs, sugar, and salt. Gradually add milk. Add rice, raisins, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg
Poor into buttered 1-quart casserole. Set in shallow pan; pour hot water into pan 1 inch deep. Bake in slow oven 1 1/2 hours, or until a knife inserted in the center comes clean.
Makes 4 to 6 servings.
So that was my mother's primary way to make this recipe. I've adjusted this to meet my need for simpler prep (skip the water bath), individual portions, and dairy-free.
I substitute soy milk for dairy milk, bake the custard in buttered custard cups, skip the pan of water as a water bath, and reduce the temp to about 300 degrees F. (The temperature can be reduced by 25 degrees F when not using the water bath method.) In custard cups, this bakes at 300 F for about 35-40 minutes and makes 5 to 6 custard cups.
I also like to change the recipe up a bit. One of my current favorites is almond-rice custard. I omit the cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and optional raisins and add 1 teaspoon of almond extract. For the almond rice custard, I like to top servings with raspberry or cherry preserves.
I enjoy rice custard so much that I would choose this over cakes and cookies most days, which is a very good thing as I'm currently not able to eat cakes and cookies.
