Have some rice leftover or simply can’t get enough of it? Bake rice pudding in the oven that will never disappoint!

As rice is not being the staple of the Western culinary culture, we tend not to regard it in such high esteem. Sure, enough there are some dishes that couldn’t exist without it and a sudden rice shortage would doom entire nations into culinary oblivion. But overall west of the Ural people just doesn’t tend to push rice to its full potential.

Being a staple food in Asia, means people could get creative with it as much as we experimented with wheat flour or South America with corn. It doesn’t mean that when the masters of wheat could get their hands on it, didn’t try out a thing or two.

Unfortunately, rice lacks the necessary gluten to form such an amazing culinary poetry as we enjoy with the plain old white flour but nowadays this gluten free feature comes quite handy when so many of us have intolerances, allergies or just feel better without wheat.

So, when we use rice as a base for cakes, we can’t expect to have anything overly airy fluffiness like we used to with bread or sponge cakes. But it also doesn’t mean that we can only make cookies and shortbread with it.

Actually, rice flour can make pretty decent cookies and pies without much difference to the ones we already know and love without much extra hassle and strange sounding ingredients.

Using rice also gives us the possibility to use brown rice which alters very little the taste of its end product but provides some wholeness to our diet, making it much more suitable for diabetics and for those who are looking for low GI food sources comparing to corn or generally other gluten free solutions.

However, rice on its own won’t provide us much fluffiness, we can use some tricks and more importantly additional ingredients to sneak in some air-bubbles into the pastry and keep them there for a while.

As much as sponge cake uses the magical properties of egg to create structure, we can apply the same principles to the rice, as well.

Rice pudding is actually nothing really more than rice cooked in milk and flavored with a bit of vanilla and traditionally a lot of sugar that we substitute with natural sweeteners or actually any sweetener of preference.

When we use an already delicious dessert as a base for something more elaborate, like it was the case for these not so simple trifles, we are knocking on the door of confectionary greatness.

Filling rice pudding with the beaten-up egg whites will provide us the airy structure we need to create the sponginess we crave for when making gluten free desserts.

Italians tend to create two layers by not mixing the vanilla and rice together but placing the vanilla custard on top of a rice layer and call it Torta di riso alla Carrarina which basically means Rice cake from Carrarina.

The Italian rice cake of course can’t provide much fluffiness as the beaten egg whites aren’t mixed into the whole of the pastry, creating a soft but rather dense dessert which will be our cake anyway if we mess up the egg folding technique.

When we succeed, the result will be a sort of airy but rather spongy cake that lightness is hard to resist, be it breakfast or some deliciously syrup soaked dessert.

Ingredients

1½ cups / 300g Rice
6 cups / 1500g Milk
1 tablespoons / 15g Vanilla extract
4 tablespoons / 60g Honey or sweetener of choice (optional to taste)
5 medium / 250g Eggs (separated)
4 tablespoons / 50g Butter (unsalted) (room temperature)
Chocolate or strawberry syrup (check out how to make sugar free Raspberry syrup or Strawberry jam)

Kitchen utensils

7½” x 12″ / 19cm x 30cm Baking tray

How to make Baked rice pudding

Rinse the rice then put it into a medium size saucepan.
Add milk, vanilla extract and the optional honey or sweetener of choice too.
Cook on medium to low heat with the lid on while stirring it occasionally until the rice appears in the milk for about 30 minutes.
Turn the heat to low then with the lid on cook it for another 10 minutes. With electric cooktops just turn the heat completely off and let the residual heat do its thing.
Beat eggs until it gets a light yellow color.
Mix rice with the butter.
Make sure the rice isn’t hot to touch then fold in the beaten eggs too then pour the whole thing into a baking tray.
Put it in a 350°F / 180°C preheated oven for half an hour or until the top is golden brown. Serve it with strawberry jam or hot chocolate.

Enjoy!

Note: Check out how to make Sugar Free Syrup here: Low Carb Condiments

Flavors aren’t just ingredients but shapes too. These cakes come in squares but they are at all not edgy:

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Baked Rice Pudding Recipe

Have some rice leftover or simply can’t get enough of it? Bake rice pudding in the oven that will never disappoint!

Course Breakfast, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine Gluten free, Sugar free recipe

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 40

Total Time 50

Equipment

7½" x 12" / 19cm x 30cm Baking tray

Ingredients

▢ 1½ cups Rice
▢ 6 cups Milk
▢ 5 medium Eggs separated
▢ 4 tablespoons Butter unsalted (room temperature)
▢ 1 tablespoons Vanilla extract
▢ 4 tablespoons Honey or sweetener of choice
▢ Chocolate or strawberry syrup

Instructions

Rinse the rice then put it into a medium size saucepan.
Add milk, vanilla extract and the optional honey or sweetener of choice too.
Cook on medium to low heat with the lid on while stirring it occasionally until the rice appears in the milk for about 30 minutes.
Turn the heat to low then with the lid on cook it for another 10 minutes. With electric cooktops just turn the heat completely off and let the residual heat do its thing.
Beat eggs until it gets a light yellow color.
Mix rice with the butter.
Make sure the rice isn’t hot to touch then fold in the beaten eggs too then pour the whole thing into a baking tray.
Put it in a 350°F / 180°C preheated oven for half an hour or until the top is golden brown. Serve it with strawberry jam or hot chocolate.