Baked Rice Pudding with Breadcrumbs
Description
Baked Rice Pudding is delicious as it sounds, but this gratin-style sweet rice pudding is way more fancy with golden, crunchy bites of bread on top, yes, not the classic one you know, but it is rich and creamy and could be the the best rice pudding recipe ever, and a one most requested dessert from family and friends. Cooked on the stovetop and then baked in the oven and served with orange blossom scented sugar syrup
Equipment
- Pot
- casserole
Ingredients
To make the rice pudding:
- I cup rice
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 8 cups whole milk whole, full-fat 3.5% b.f. milk is best and don’t use less than 2%, for best results.
- 1 /3 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 teaspoon mastic gum otional but highly recommended, and can be substituted with 1/2 teaspoon sugar vanilla
- 2 tablespoons orange blossom water
- 1 teaspoon butter to grease the oven dish
- 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs to add a crunchy topping to the pudding or make your own from scratch by following the recipe below in the note section.
For the sugar syrup:
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup water
- 2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 3 teaspoons orange blossom water
Instructions
To make the sugar syrup:
- Place the sugar, water, and lemon juice in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir the mixture with a wooden spoon to dissolve the sugar. Once it boils reduce heat to low and simmer for 7 minutes. Do not cover the saucepan.
- Add the orange blossom water and simmer for 1 more minute.
- Set aside to completely cool down.
To make the rice pudding:
- Rinde the rice under running cold water and drain. Transfer to a pot, add the water and bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover up and simmer for 20 to 25 minutes until the rice is totally cooked. If the rice has made a thin crust of slightly browned bottom, transfer the rice to another stockpot.
- Return the rice pot to the stovetop, and working ½ cup at a time, add the milk to your rice, and cook over medium low heat. Stir the rice continually until all the liquid is absorbed, then add the remaining milk, a ½ cup at a time, into the rice until the 8 cups of milk are all absorbed by the rice.
- Add the heavy cream and stir to homogenize the mix and continue cooking until the rice has absorbed the cream. Add the orange blossom water, stir well. The process takes about 30 minutes for the rice to absorb the milk and in that gradual fashion. The mixture at this stage should be considerably like a thick soup. Remove from heat and set aside.
- Preheat oven to 170°C/ 340°F.
- Grease an ovenproof dish or individual ramekins with butter and evenly sprinkle half of the breadcrumbs. Laddle the rice pudding in the oven dish or individual ramekins, sprinkle the surface with the remaining breadcrumbs.
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the surface of the rice pudding turns golden. Serve warm or at room temperature. Note that it will thicken more as it sits. With a detailed video tutorial
Video
Notes
To make the breadcrumbs from scratch: Preheat the oven to 250° F /120° C. Slice the white bread ( I used here 5 slices of white bread). Place bread slices directly on the oven racks in the preheated oven. Bake until hard and golden brown, about 25 minutes; Remove bread and cool on a wire rack. Place in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to a chieve fine crumbs.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!