PAULA DEEN'S RICE PUDDING

 Earlier this week I shared my experiences and recipe for cooking brown rice in my new Instant Pot. Missed it? You can check it out here. In that post I said I had made some rice pudding with the leftover brown rice and used one of only three recipes I could find for rice pudding in a number of my cookbooks. True. I didn't look through all of them that might have had a recipe in them, but that would take a day or two since I have so - o - o many cookbooks. (Since then I was looking for another recipe through my recipe box and guess what I found. Yep! A recipe for rice pudding. Isn't that always the way it is. You look forever for something and then find it when you are looking for something else. Well, that recipe will have to wait for another day and another post.)

I was really surprised that I couldn't find many recipes for rice pudding, especially in the "collection" type cookbooks. Wayne, who is not very fond of rice pudding says it's a Southern dish. Well, he's also from the south. Guess his mother didn't like it. My daddy who lived most of his life in the south was born in Wyoming and he always ate rice in a bowl with milk and sugar. No one else in the family did. Love memories!

But back to the post at hand ... Paula Deen's Rice Pudding. The interesting thing to me was that Paula used brown rice in this recipe when she baked it. She said the nutty flavor of the brown rice was a perfect combination with the dried cherries, cinnamon, and nutmeg which surprised her.

Since Wayne is not fond of rice pudding as I said earlier, I got to enjoy a "square" of it every morning for breakfast until it was eaten up. Yummy! (He did eat one or two squares but that's about all. I cried! 😢)

PAULA DEEN'S RICE PUDDING

2-1/2     cups milk

3           large eggs, lightly beaten

1           cup cooked brown or white rice

1/2        cup sugar

1/2        cup dried cherries, coarsely chopped

1           teaspoon vanilla

1/4        teaspoon salt

1/2        teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4        teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/2        teaspoon freshly grated orange zest (I used dried orange peel)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Grease an 8 - inch square baking dish with cooking spray. (Make sure the dish will fit inside a larger 9 x 13 - inch pan. It wouldn't fit in one of my pans with space all around. Might not be a lot on the narrow sides but there will be some.)

In a large bowl, whisk together the milk and eggs until combined.

Stir in the rice, sugar, cherries, vanilla, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and orange zest.

 

Spoon the mixture into the prepared baking dish. (Use a large spoon to do this. You don't want to pour the mixture in or you will be trying to spread the rice out evenly in the dish. You also want to evenly cover the top with the spices.)

Place the baking dish inside a 9 x 13 - inch pan and carefully pour water into the pan to a depth of 1 inch.

Bake for about 1-1/2 hours, or until the rice pudding is lightly browned and set. Remove pudding from the 9 x 13 - inch pan.

Cool slightly and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Cut into squares

to serve.

Here is my brown rice I cooked in my Instant Pot.