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Rice Pudding: Solar Cooker Desserts

Posted by Jonathan

Solar Cooker Desserts: Rice Pudding
Even rice pudding cooked in a solar cooker

1 cup rice, cooked

3 eggs

1 1/3 cups milk

2 tablespoons brown sugar

5 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon butter

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon lemon juice

fresh lemon rind

cinnamon

Combine eggs, milk, sugars, butter and vanilla. Mix into the cooked rice. Add lemon juice and rind. Place in dark pan. Cover and bake 1 1/2 hours. Sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar when done.
Source: SolarCooking.Wikia.com

As with all recipes for solar cookers, your cooking times may vary, depending on the sun, your solar cooker, the temperature of your solar cooker, your location on the planet, and any other number of factors. Just remember that this should be fun to experiment with. Try a few different recipes, note the position of the sun in the sky, and try to make sure your solar cooker stays pointed at the sun the whole time it is cooking. Note how long it takes food to cook in your cooker, at your location, during the time of year you are cooking your food, and adjust the recipes accordingly. Generally speaking, it's difficult to burn your food in a solar cooker.

Rice pudding is a dessert enjoyed by people of different cultures all over the world, originating in Asia. It is made by combining rice with a sweetener and other ingredients.

North America
In Canada and the United States of America, most recipes have descended from European immigrants. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Asian and Middle Eastern recipes have become more common. In the United States' New England region, the most popular is made with long grain rice, eggs, milk, sugar, or in the U.S. state of Vermont, maple syrup. This is combined with nutmeg, cinnamon, and raisins. The pudding is usually partially cooked on top of the stove in a double boiler, and then "finished" in an oven.

United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom, rice pudding is a traditional dessert, and is very popular. Rice pudding is traditionally made with pudding rice, milk, cream, sugar and is sometimes, but not always, flavoured with vanilla, nutmeg or cinnamon. It can be made in two ways, in a saucepan or by baking in the oven. In a saucepan, it is made by gently simmering the milk and rice until tender and then the sugar is carefully mixed in. Finally, the cream is mixed in and it can either be left to cool and be served at room temperature, or it can be heated and served hot, it should have a very creamy consistency. When made in the oven, the pudding rice is placed into a baking dish and the milk, cream and sugar are mixed in. The dish is then placed in the oven and baked at a low temperature for a few hours, until the rice is tender and the pudding has a creamy consistency. Whilst cooking, the pudding may have developed a thick crust which, when eaten, adds an interesting texture to the pudding. Ready-made rice pudding, which is pre-cooked and ready to eat, is sold in tin cans or pots and is very widely available and found in most supermarkets and shops. Because it is canned, it has a very long shelf life.

History
Rice was first cultivated in Asia. Over thousands of years, various pudding recipes have developed in the Eastern Asia. Some include fruit and honey, while others are far simpler consisting of only rice, water and sugar.

For the west, rice pudding originated in the Middle East or Persia. The dessert gained popularity during the Middle Ages. Firni, one of the oldest of these Middle Eastern puddings, is made with rice flour and was introduced to India by the Moghuls. Records of an Indian sweet milk pudding occur in the 14th century. Shola, flavored with rose water, was introduced to Persia by the 13th century Mongols and is now eaten in much of west Asia. However the Indian Kheer has an independent history, as it is older than 2000 years.

A reference to rice pudding is found in the third verse of the seventeenth-century nursery rhyme, "Pop Goes the Weasel:"

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
Mix it up and make it nice,
Pop goes the weasel.

Enjoy your rice pudding from your solar cooker!