TWD Arborio Rice Pudding

Our Challenge for this week's TWD is Arboria Rice Pudding, White, Black (or both). My challenge could have been called, if at first you don't succeed, try, try again! I am not a big fan of rice pudding so I was not too excited about trying this recipe. It seemed simple and not as time consuming as last week's recipe so I decided to give it a try. A mixture of milk, rice, sugar and vanilla are cooked slowly until it thickens. Somewhere along the way, this went wrong and I ended up with rice soup instead of pudding. I made two mistakes that lead to this debacle. First I used the wrong rice. I didn't have Arborio rice in my pantry, so I used regular long grain rice. Second, I learned that the cooking time needed to be longer.

I could have stopped there but I hated to let something so simple end in failure. I decided to give it a second try. Luckily I found the correct rice (I live 30 minutes from a medium size store and an hour from a large one) and set out to correct my mistakes.

The second try turned out great! I'm so glad that I decided to give it another chance. On the second try, the pudding thickened after about 45 minutes. It had a perfect creamy consistency and wasn't too sweet. It tasted great warm or chilled. I didn't add the chocolate this time but might in the future.

Thanks to OSI: Isabelle from Les gourmandises d’Isa for choosing this recipe. I will definitely be making this again!

Kugelhopf

This weeks recipe for Tuesdays with Dorie is Kugelhopf. What is Kugelhopf? It is a cake/bread that is baked in a specially shaped pan. The bread comes from Alsace, in the northeast France. This recipe is not that difficult but you need to allow yourself time for the rising part.





A stand mixer with a dough hook are nice to have when preparing this recipe. It takes about 10 minutes to come together after all the ingredients are added. Then you have to let it rise until it doubles. Then it must be refrigerated and punched down until it stops rising. I let it stay in the refrigerator overnight.

Then you put it over in your special kegelhopf/turban pan. I was lucky to have a silicone version that I had never used. The dough is suppose to rise to the top of the mold. Mine never seemed to rise to that height.

It turned out very good but slightly misshapen. The bottom part did not look much like a turban. This was the first time making Kugelhopf. I'm not a very experienced bread maker so I was happy with the results. The bread had a good taste and a nice texture.

TWD: Rugelach

This weeks recipe is Rugelach. These cookies are made with a cream cheese dough and have a sweet filling. You can use a varity of jam, nuts, chocotate, and currents for these cookies. I chose raspberry jam, pecan and mini chocolate chips. I left out the currents and I don't think it hurt the flavor of the cookies.

The dough is easy to make using the food processor. It must then chill for at least 2 hours. I rolled my dough a little too thin and had trouble keeping it together after the cookies where filled. I was a little disappointed with the appearance of my cookies but they tasted great.

These cookies were a hit with my family and I'm sure that I will make them again.