#39: Rice Pudding
You would be hard-pressed to find someone who believed rice pudding to be among the sexier members of the dessert family, unless perhaps you were conversing with someone bed-ridden and elderly, but even they would likely admit that there are more appealing foods to gum your way through. Generally, most individuals do not equate rice pudding with being a remotely sophisticated or attractive dessert option. The word ‘pudding’ itself doesn’t inspire much refinement or temptation either – even the letters, when all grouped together, look like they’ve just been sloppily plopped down on the page. Ugh.
But, like any good ugly duckling story, rice pudding gets its Rachel Leigh Cook-coming-down-the-stairs moment to shine. And that moment is now. Enter two very different, but both decidedly appealing (dare I say, even sexy) rice pudding recipes for you to do a double-take to. The first, an updated version of traditional rice pudding, topped with rum syrup-soaked fruit and the buttery crunch of toasted almonds. The second, an unintentionally vegan AND gluten-free recipe that is absolutely seeped in coconutty goodness and garnished with a hideously addictive coconut crumble and glittery threads of candied lime peel. Both of them are so full of themselves - knowing that they’re helping rice pudding out of a long-running unpopular phase - they’re becoming insufferable.
