Chai Latte Sticky Sweet Rice Pudding

I promise one day soon I’ll post a savoury bake, I’ve been meaning too. I just have such a demanding sweet tooth.

The great and recently departed B.B. King once declared that he didn’t like to play chords. Oh the irony that one of the greatest guitarist of all time hated one of the fundamentals of his craft. I suppose that basically sums up my relationship with cooking. I can’t make a direct comparison because let’s face it I’m no B.B. King of baking. But his sentiments of playing chords are the easiest way for me to describe the sheer stressful nature of cooking.

This is a slow cook which only requires you to keep an eye on it

I don’t enjoy having to cook not one bit and I only do it out of necessity and to keep myself out of a diabetic coma… I guess what I’m trying to say is that if I could, I would eat cake, and biscuits and chocolate treats all day long every day. So this next recipe is a compromise to sweet and savoury ingredients…

This sweet rice pudding-ish bake is both filling, easy to make and you more than probably have the main ingredient in your pantry. It’s a delicately sweet rice pudding with dried fruit and a light flavour of chai tea. I’m not entirely sure when would be an appropriate time to have it, but then again to me any time is an appropriate time for sweet treats. I’ve used Teapig’s Chai Tea, mainly because I always buy Teapigs tea but you can use any chai tea you want. This is a slow cook which only requires you to keep an eye on it in the oven every once in a while. So apart from the initial quick prep all you have to do is sit back an salivate at the thought of pudding.

Stop salivating and let’s begin!

Prep time 10 minutes
Cooking time is approximately 1 hour 30minutes
This recipe should serve 4.

INGREDIENTS

2 Chai Tea
600ml semi-skimmed milk
100g rice
50g golden caster sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1 cinnamon stick
50g chopped pistachios
50g dried cranberries
50g dried chopped apricots

METHOD

Begin by preheating the oven to 150°c, gas mark 2.
1. Boil 150mls of water in a medium sized saucepan. Once brought to a boil add your two chai tea bags and reduce heat to a simmer. Leave to infuse for 5 minutes and carefully remove teabags and leave to cool.
2. Add the milk, sugar, rice and vanilla extract and stir into a combine mixture and add the cinnamon stick. Bring the mixture to a simmer than pour into an oven proof dish. You can also make individual rice puddings by using small oven proof dishes. If you do make individual one remember to reduce cooking time by about 15-20 minutes.
3. Bake for 1 hour and 30 minutes until the rice is cooked and the liquid has been absorbed. Remove cinnamon stick and stir to loosed the rice.
4. Add your dried fruit and nuts and serve immediately. You can also leave it to cool and refrigerate it for later.

Enjoy!

As always I would love to see how your bark from this recipe turned out, and what combinations you’ve decided to try, so follow me on instagram @cakesthebiscuit and hashtag #cakesthebiscuit or follow and tweet me @cakes_biscuit on Twitter!