What was to be tonight’s final entry from me is not to be, but it was such a disaster, I must share.
I was making rum-raisin rice pudding, in the crockpot. I checked five or six times to make sure I had the ingredients (not many: rum, raisins, rice, evaporated milk, sugar, water, salt, and nutmeg).
Set about making it, followed the first step of soaking the raisins in the rum and putting aside for later.
Reached up for the evaporated milk, opened it…wait a minute!…this is sweetened condensed milk. Why in god’s name the canned milk makers insist on making the labels nearly identical for these two products is beyond me.
Now, I know a big difference between evaporated milk and condensed milk is that the former is unsweetened and the latter is very, very much sweetened. Since I’d already opened my condensed milk, I wanted to use it, so it looked at the back to see how much sugar was in it, looked at the recipe to see how much sugar was in that, did some quick hillbilly math, and figured out how much condensed milk to use to get the sugar content right, then worked out how much additional liquid I’d need to make up the original amount of evaporated milk…was putting it all together when I double-checked the sugar in the condensed milk and realized it was per serving (2TB) and not per can (14oz), so I had to go back to my figuring, redid all that, then got back on track.
Heated the liquid up, poured it in the slow cooker, added the rice and the salt, set it on low…then suddenly realized that, for whatever reason, I’d had my cups to ounces off, and hadn’t added quite enough liquid, so I added more milk.
Came back in an hour later, gave it a good stir, like the recipe instructed, and again at the three hour mark (total cook time of four hours).
That second stir, though, it looked pretty good, so I tasted it…tasted cooked through and done, so I went ahead and put the crockpot on the warm setting, stirred in the rum and raisins, and just left it to sit for about 30 minutes on warm, to really get the flavors nice and blended.
Three hours later (you read that right), I went out to make the evening tea, and I was getting the water ready, getting the cups out, and I thought, “What’s that really sweet, sort of nutty smell? Whatever it is, it sure smells good!”
Then I looked down right in front of me, at my behemoth of a crockpot, and remembered, “Oh yeah, I’m making rice pudding!”
Popped the lid off, found a good layer browned (but not burnt) on the sides, gave it a good stir, and saw that it didn’t resemble rice pudding at all…more like mashed potatoes…with raisins in.
Tasted it, it tasted fine, but the texture was horrible, like paste.
So that’s that!
