Two Winter warmer rice pudding dessert recipes

Despite it not being at all cold yet in southern France (yes, I'm gloating!),

my thoughts have still been turning to winter-style foods including hot desserts. Over the past week or so I have made two very different rice pudding desserts, one a variation on the Portuguese arroz doce I blogged a couple of years ago now, and the other my attempt to recreate a Malaysian black rice dessert that we enjoyed at a barbecue dinner while pitched up in Hailsham.

As both these desserts are super cheap to make I am submitting this post to November's Credit Crunch Munch which, this month, is being hosted by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary. The frugal food recipe sharing challenge was developed by Helen over at Fuss Free Flavours and Camilla over at Fab Food 4 All. If you would like to add your own economical recipe the linkup is at the end of this post and there's some gorgeous looking veggie creations already posted. Dave will be SO excited!!

Chai Arroz Doce is my first recipe. I first tried my hand at creating Arroz

Chai Arroz Doce 

Doce (sweet rice) when we were travelling through Portugal in 2013. The Portuguese are a frugal people and much of their traditional cuisine makes use of cheap ingredients. Arroz Doce is flavoured with cinnamon and citrus fruit zest, but I fancied something a little different so tried substituting a Chai tea bag for the cinnamon stick in my original recipe. It worked a treat and also coloured the pudding a delicate caramel shade.

Ingredients
100g arborio rice
400ml semi-skimmed milk
3 tbsp demerera sugar
1 Chai tea bag

Put the rice, milk, sugar and tea bag into a saucepan. Heat through, stirring continuously.

As soon as the milk starts to boil, turn the heat right down so it carries on cooking at a gentle simmer. Stir every few minutes to stop the rice sticking to the bottom of the pan. Be careful not to stir so vigorously that you split the tea bag!

When practically all the milk has been absorbed and the rice is soft, the pudding is ready. This takes about half an hour. Remove the tea bag and serve immediately, decorated with a scatter of demerera sugar.

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We first tried the Malaysian black rice dessert at a barbecue hosted by

Lyekin's Black Rice 

our friends Lyekin and Chris. I admit I had never noticed black rice before so Lyekin kindly gave me some to try cooking with myself. This dessert is vegan as it uses coconut milk. It does take a bit of forethought as the rice needs to soak for several hours before cooking it. A spot of googling led to several recipes for Bubur Pulut Hitam which is certainly similar to what I made, but I am going to call mine Lyekin's Black Rice instead - at least until when she tells me I did it all wrong! I did guess all the ingredient volumes!

Ingredients
60g black glutinous rice
300ml water plus extra for rinsing and soaking
2 tbsp demerera sugar
200ml coconut cream

Rinse the black glutinous rice two or three times, then place in fresh water and leave to soak. Lyekin gave me the snipped instructions from her pack which said to soak the rice for three hours. Other recipes all say to leave it overnight. I soaked my rice for eight hours and this was enough.

Drain and rinse the rice, then place it in a saucepan with 300ml fresh water. Bring to a boil then lower the heat and simmer, stirring frequently to prevent sticking, until the water has been absorbed and the rice is soft. It goes very purple!

Spoon the rice into individual serving bowls and set aside.

Squeeze the coconut cream into a clean (or cleaned) saucepan over a medium heat. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Heat the coconut until it is hot, but not boiling. Pour equal amounts into each individual dish and serve immediately. The rice and coconut cream should be in two layers until the diner mixes them up. This turns the white cream a pretty purple colour. (I was too keen on eating to remember a photograph!)

Perhaps 200ml was too much coconut cream, but this was the pack size so I used it all up. And certainly as a dinner party dessert 20g of rice would be plenty per person. However, Lyekin's Black Rice is dangerously moreish!