Guilty Pleasures: Baked Rice Pudding

Everyone has a guilty pleasure. Mine tend to be desserts. One of my all time favorites is rice pudding. Not just any rice pudding but the old baked recipe found in my mom's old church cookbooks. Some of my favorite recipes come from those old church and community cookbooks. 

I have made this recipe a few times as a young adult, but when I got married and started collecting recipes I love, I tried to find this recipe again and failed. My mom and I both looked through all the old and worn blue cookbooks and came up empty handed. This sent me on a quest to find the recipe online. After serching everywhere, I finally came across the recipe from Paula Dean. Finally I light at the end of the tunnel!

I cannot tell you how excited I was to try it out and even more excited that it actually turned out! Nice warm bread pudding right out of the oven on a cold winter night is such a great joy.

Baked Rice Pudding from Paula Dean

Ingredients

• 1 cup cooked rice
• 2 1/2 cups milk
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly grease a 9-inch glass baking dish.
In a large bowl, stir together first 7 ingredients. Spoon into prepared baking dish. Place baking dish in a large pan; pour water into the pan to a depth of 1-inch. Bake for 1 1/2 hours, or until lightly browned and set. Combine cinnamon and nutmeg; sift over top of pudding. Cool slightly and cut into squares to serve.

(I stir mine every 15 minutes or so as I remember the original recipe called for so I can't cut into squares but scoop it out.)