Farm Fresh Rice Pudding

The other night I got a little over zealous with the amount of rice that I cooked for dinner, and I ended up with A LOT of leftovers!  Fortunately I had the idea for this super simple recipe in my back pocket!  I looked around on the internet for some inspiration, and found lots of rice pudding recipes that called for cream, half and half, or fat free milk even... Cornstarch, egg whites only, and *gasp*, no butter! No thanks.  You know I had to throw my own little farmstead twist on it, so I put the recipes away and headed to the kitchen with just my fresh ingredients, and a slight understanding on how to get pudding to come together.

When I write and share recipes, I like to write them exactly as I did it with the exact ingredients that I used.  Since I use raw goats milk in all of my recipes, that's how I write them, but by all means use what ever milk you have easy access to or prefer.

So without further ado...

Farm Fresh Rice Pudding

2 1/2 cups of leftover sweet brown rice
4 1/2 cups raw goats milk
2/3 cups organic evaporated cane juice
pinch of salt
1 farm fresh egg, beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp real butter
Cinnamon for garnishing

Combine the rice, milk, sugar and salt in a saucepan, and heat over medium heat.  Slowly bring to a boil, stirring often to prevent the milk from scorching on the bottom of the pan.  Meanwhile beat the egg well in a separate bowl.  When the milk mixture reaches a boil, remove about 1/4 cup and very slowly add it to the beaten egg, stirring constantly and vigorously.  This process is bringing the egg to the appropriate temperature so that when you add it to the milk mixture it doesn't cook too fast and you end up with chunks of egg in your pudding.  When it is well mixed, very slowly add the egg mixture into the milk mixture, again stirring constantly a vigorously.  A whisk works well for this job.  Continue to simmer and constantly stir the pudding until it is nice and thick like a custard.  This can take 20-25 minutes.  Once it is properly thickened, remove from heat, and stir in the vanilla and butter.  Transfer to a glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator to completely cool.  If you press the plastic wrap all the way down to touch the top of the pudding it will prevent it from forming a "skin."  I prefer not to do that though, because the skin doesn't bother me and it's super easy to stir it back in when it's time to serve up the pudding.  When you are ready to serve your pudding, spoon it into cute little glass dishes and sprinkle with cinnamon. 

And that's it!  A great, fun and yummy way to use up my plethora of milk!  Enjoy!