Misfire: Rice pudding cupcakes
One of my favorite reasons to travel is to eat. You can tell how much I enjoy the food of a place by how eager I am to return there. In Asia, one of the things that makes me happiest is the proliferation of glutinous rice desserts. As dumplings, soups, cakes and puddings, preferably with mango…. I love them.
So, whenever I find myself with extra rice, and some time to kill, I find myself fiddling with rice puddings. My basic start is always the same: whatever rice is on hand, mixed with whatever milk or cream is on hand (plus condensed milk if I have it), then sugar and vanilla to taste. Tasty, easy, ready to go in any direction.
Today, I thought, wouldn’t it be delightful if it had a crusty hard shell on the outside, with a creamy interior, like persian rice? And, since I love me some cherries, maybe I’d stuff it with a wee bit of cherry jam. Delightful.
(stuffing, ready to go in the oven, out of the oven)
I baked. And baked. And baked some more. But after 40 minutes in the oven, I still had to scoop one out of its muffin cup to eat it. It was tasty. But only a little bit of the desired crust was to be found, and it definitely didn’t hold together.
My first and best explanation is, the pudding was just too darn wet. I like my puddings pretty thick to begin with, but not thick enough. Coupled with the extra liquid the jam added, they bubbled, and they oozed, and they steamed, but they did not really crust over.
There are probably some other factors out there, like basic properties of rice that I just don’t understand. This was just standard jasmine rice, not glutinous, so maybe it’s just not possible to get it to work under those circumstances. I was freestyling, so I baked it at 350…. maybe that wasn’t hot enough. I didn’t grease the muffin cups.
Anyway. Edible, but chalk one up for failed creative license.
