A Little Pudding for my Little (Picky) Pudding!

I have one of the fussiest children ever when it comes to meal time. It takes me forever to find something she likes and then she usually goes off it very quickly anyway so I am always trying new recipes on the Tinker.

She isn't a huge fan of rice and doesn't like custard so I wasn't confident when I tried one of my favourite pudding dishes out on the Tinker and to my surprise it was a real hit. I thought I'd post my recipe here just in case you might like to try it.

I use soy milk but it works fine with regular cows milk. There are few things I hate more than soy milk, that awful nutty chemically flavour. Yuck. I hate it. That was until I discovered this soy milk from a Japanese recipe called Bonsoy. Honestly it tastes like regular milk, I like it so much that I have stopped buying dairy milk all together now. I can't believe I drink soy. I feel dirty just typing it. As thought I've become some sort of freak who doesn't ever eat hot chips and only uses that beige enviro toilet paper...

Ok so I'll stop waffling about bloody soy milk and share my recipe. This is my take on a basic rice custard that Stephanie Alexander writes about. I've changed quantities and added some brandy and my own favourite crust. Feel free to leave the brandy out and if you hate sultanas just double the rice and ditch those. You can ditch my walnut crust if you prefer a more traditional pudding but I really like the sweet crunchy crust at the top, it is nice when you break through to the soft pudding.

Tinker's Pudding

Ingredients

Pudding:
Butter
2 1/2cups of milk
1 1/2 cups of sultanas
3 large eggs
3 tablespoons medium grain rice
1/4 cup castor sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla
1 tablespoon brandy

Crust:
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 tablespoons soft brown sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter softened
3 tablespoons self raising flour
3 tablespoons chopped walnuts

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, lightly butter a 1litre ovenproof dish and sit the buttered dish into a larger baking dish which will act as a basin.

Bring a small saucepan of water to the boil and cook the rice for 10 minutes. Drain and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar, vanilla and brandy. Then add the rice & sultanas.

Stir in the milk.

Pour into your buttered dish. (for the dairy free folk I think if you use say a glass pyrex dish then the pudding is going to be ok without buttering, it may stick just a touch but no big deal)

Now add some boiling water to the large baking dish that is acting as the basin. Fill up to halfway.

Bake for 30 minutes.

While the pudding is baking you need to prepare your crust.

Mix the crust ingredients in a bowl or in your mortar & pestle. Once the pudding has been in the oven for 30 minutes, carefully take it out and sprinkle the crust on top.

Don't panic if it sinks into the pudding a bit, it will come back up and form a nice crust!

Bake for a further 15-20 mins. Check on your pudding, it should have a crunchy slightly gooey crust. Take it out and let it sit for about 10-15 minutes to cool and set a bit more.

Serve with some cream if you are feeling thin or serve it on its own if you are feeling fat.