Scandinavian Christmas: Day 12

Welcome back to Scandinavian Christmas, Day 12. I can't believe today is the last day of the series! It has been so much fun hearing from everyone. Thank you all to have participated and have read the series!

 Today I get to introduce you to my sweets, Ryan.  He is mostly German with a small percentage Scandinavian heritage, but we definitely play up the Scandinavian part over the holidays. :)  Today he is going to share with you one of his new-found loves: rice pudding.

I want to preface the following few paragraphs by fully acknowledging that, prior to this morning, I had never made rice pudding in my life, and in fact, I’ve only eaten the dessert once before. That being said, a few hours from now, the rice pudding in question, may very well be inedible.

However, the chances of it being something that people will pretend to like out of politeness are slim to none. And the reason is that the recipe is the one that my wife’s mom (my mother-in-law) (I guess I don’t need to explain what a mother in law is) (oh, yeah…my wife is Kathryn, the Pickled Herring herself) (I’m not sure if it’s grammatically correct to have four parenthetical statements in a row, but I did end a sentence in a preposition in the first paragraph, so who cares, right?) has used since the Kennedy administration. I’m sure SOMEBODY would have told her if it wasn’t good over the course of a half-century. Plus, she’s an amazing cook, so I’m absolutely sure this recipe has no fault of any kind and produces rice pudding not unlike the milk and honey the Israelites enjoyed in the Sinai Peninsula during the exodus.

Nancy Tournell (the mother-in-law) is the common denominator in equations that equal good food.

And I am the numerator.

And by that, I mean I don’t really cook. And by that, I mean I have one specialty. And by that, I mean I cook a lot of Trader Joe’s pizzas.

So all I can ask of you, dear blog readers who just so happen to read said blog in the few fleeting hours between the posting time and dinner time…is for you to wish me luck. Or pray. Or both.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups heavy milk

¾ cups of sugar

5 eggs

½ tsp of salt

½ tsp of nutmeg

1 tsp of vanilla

½ cup of raw rice, cooked

Cinnamon for topping

Lingonberries for serving

DIRECTIONS:

Cook half a cup of rice, according to package directions.

Mix eggs, sugar, salt, nutmeg, vanilla together in a bowl.

Scald milk and let cool to lukewarm.

Add egg mixture to milk and rice. Pour mixture into a round casserole dish.

Sprinkle cinnamon on top.

Set casserole dish into a pan of water and cook at 325 degrees for an hour and a half.

Check with a silver knife to make sure it comes out clean. If not, cook for 10 minutes more.

Serve with lingonberries.

Eat.

Thank you, Ryan! We will see in just a matter of hours just how edible it is.  There is no doubt in my mind that you did an extra fine job!  And a huge thanks again to everyone that took the time to participate in this year's Scandinavian Christmas series - it was a blast! 

GOD JUL!