Who doesn’t love delicious rice pudding!?

I’m at that stage of life where reminiscing about food feels like flipping through an edible photo album.

The other day, I spotted a tin of rice pudding on the supermarket shelf. Don’t worry, I didn’t buy it—tinned rice pudding is the sort of thing that could ruin possibly your faith in humanity.

But seeing it took me straight back to my mum’s ‘milky rice’, her frugal magic with leftover rice, milk, sugar, and a sprinkle of cinnamon. The kitchen would fill with the comforting aroma of cinnamon as she finished it off, the spice swirling into the creamy mixture like whispers of indulgence. For us children, it was a treat beyond compare—simple yet decadent, a dish that spoke of love in every spoonful.

Dad hated rice pudding, though, turning his nose up at the very idea of sweetened rice. But that only made it more special for us, a rare delight we didn’t have to share. We never thought of it as thrifty or plain; to us, it was pure luxury, a reminder that even the simplest things could become extraordinary in the right hands. Mum’s hands.

Rice pudding wasn’t just dessert—it was childhood itself. Now, I haven’t eaten milky rice in ages. You don’t see it on menus unless you’re somewhere like the Castle Hotel in Blarney, which has an excellent rice pudding.

Making a small portion at home always feels like over-committing for just one or two people. But after that fateful supermarket encounter, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So, last Sunday, I went ahead but instead of following mum’s stovetop shortcut (cooking rice and pudding separately? Not today!), I cracked open my trusted Delia Smith’s 'Complete Cookery Course’.

Delia bakes hers. Turns out that many recipes involve baking, resulting in a dark crust that looks suspiciously like burnt optimism and not something I like. No thanks.

So, I winged it with a hybrid approach: 400ml milk, 200ml cream (because life is better with cream), a splash of vanilla paste, a tbsp of caster sugar (I add more sugar later), and 50g of pudding rice.

Bring the milk, cream, and sugar to a simmer—stirring to dissolve the sugar. Once dissolved, I added the rice, cooking the rice in the milk first, reduced baking time. About ten minutes in, as the rice softened, I threw in a knob of butter.

Why? Honestly, because butter is my answer to most of life’s questions. The way it melted into the mix felt downright decadent. I buttered a few ovenproof dishes (though one big one works if you’re feeling less fussy) and spooned in the rice mixture.

With the oven set to Gas Mark 2, I placed the dishes on the lower shelf and baked for 30 minutes. A brown skin still formed—something I stirred back into the pudding halfway through because, well, I’m a rebel like that.

The result? A luscious, creamy rice pudding with a whisper of vanilla. The finishing touch was a sprinkle of cinnamon-sugar magic: two spoons of caster sugar to one of cinnamon.

The first bite? Pure nostalgia. Suddenly, I was back in our warm, bustling kitchen, sitting next to the old stove that heated the whole house. Mum’s glasses always fogged up over her bowl of hot rice pudding, and she’d try not to laugh as we made fun of her.

For me, rice pudding has to be eaten just like that—steaming hot, cinnamon sugar melting into every spoonful, and memories stirred into every bite.