TWD: Arborio Rice Pudding

Update 11/21/08, 11:36 am: This is the most updated post ever. Abby committed to holding her back feet up with absolutely no part touching the floor until the pudding thickened. She's got the strongest abs ever, I think.

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Update 11/19/08, 6:17 pm: Breakfast was GOOOOD this morning! Hubs and I split the chocolate bowl, and both agreed it was a very good thing. The pudding was just on the soft side of set up in my opinion, but it certainly wasn't chocolate rice soup. I tend to like to have something to chew on, so the rice added just the right note for me to really enjoy the pudding.

I snuck a bit of the vanilla batch just now, and it was quite yummy, too: milky, sweet, just right. It seemed a little less set up which is weird. Breakfast tomorrow morning will be GOOOOD, too :)

Next time I will probably use a little less milk and have the mixture simmer somewhere nearer medium heat than low for the entire 50 minutes. I think that'll give me a bit more of the set pudding I'm looking for.

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Update 11/19/08, 1:36 am: Answer: it takes milk a long time to boil. But boil it finally did, so I got the parboiled rice in there and set it to simmer for a while. By the way, my Wal-Mart is obviously stuck in non-foodie land because I could find no evidence of arborio rice among the scads of rice items. I got a bag of basmati (which I found was a reasonable substitute when making risotto, so I figured I'd try to make it work for pudding), but when I got home happily discovered about half a cup of arborio left in the pantry from my last Whole Foods run.

Now, one advantage of my complete slackness in regards to my TWD duties this week is that I got to learn from my fellow (responsible) bakers' mistakes as well as Dorie's own tip concerning the cooking time. I used closer to 1/3 cup of rice and set my timer for 50 minutes. At the end of 50 minutes I had this:

This just was not enough for me so I let it go for 10 more minutes at least twice, if not 3 times until I got this:


I figured I shouldn't push my luck (I've nicely burnt caramel with TWD; I'd like to keep milk off the list) so I poured it up into two bowls. Of course I had to do this to one of them:

These babies are now chilling in the fridge and if the lick I snuck off the stirring spoon is any indication, tomorrow's breakfast should be quite a treat.

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Update 11/18/08, 11:22 pm: Good grief, how long does it take the milk to boil??

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TWD: Don't kick me off yet! I have been slack in the last few weeks, I know, but I'm back, honest I am! I bought the rice last night and everything!

When I got home I got in a funk because the house is all messy and it was 9 pm before we got home (1st job ran long, 2nd job just added to the fun) and there wasn't time to do all I wanted to do (clean, blog, cook, shop, buy, wrap, snuggle, watch Dancing With The Stars, get to bed on time) so I went and got in bed and put the covers over my head. Best-hubs-ever came and hugged me and rubbed my back and told me I wasn't a complete slacker bum like I said I was. I really meant to get up and play the laundry relay he suggested we do (tackling mountains of clothing is much easier when there's a game involved) and get that pudding boiled and in the fridge, but I just wanted to pout a few more minutes...and the next thing I knew I woke up and it was midnight...sigh...

But today I'm making that pudding! And I'll post about it! And then tomorrow I'll eat some of it and post about it!! Promise!!!!