Egyptian Milk Pudding (Mihallabiya)

If you own a coffee mill you can grind your own rice flour. I have a coffee mill I use for this purpose a save my other mill for grinding coffee. Egyptian milk pudding is one of my favorites. This version came out a little too thin for my tastes so I ground up about one tablespoon more of the rice, covered the pan and simmered on low for six minutes. I added a pinch of ground cardamom and a few saffron threads. Reviewed for Veg Swap #19-2010.

DH is still talking about how sweet it was and I used half the amount of sugar before the amount was changed! I used a mix of vanilla and regular rice milk in replacement of the milk to be dairy free. I used less rose water. I used white rice flour purchased from my local health food store for the rice. I used sliced blanched almonds for the mixed nuts but I can see chopped pistachios looking nice on top with their green colour. I do believe the sugar amount is off though and should be greatly reduced like I did. But unlike Missy Wombat I had no trouble in it thickening to the consistency of thin custard. I will definitely make this recipe again trying the new amount of white sugar. Made for Ramadan Tag.

Made & reviewed for Ramadan Tag 2009 in the NA*ME forum. This recipe is very similar to the way we make it in Algeria - the only exception being that we tend to use orange flower water more than rose water. I think the original recipe may have had a typo as 1 cup of sugar is crazy... I actually used 2.5 tbsp of white sugar which makes it sweet enough. I also used a little over 1 tbsp of rose water & decorated with chopped pistachios. Just wanted to point out that Ground Rice & Rice Flour are really different, and that's probably why MissyWombats dessert didn't thicken. Here in the UK we can buy boxes of Ground Rice specially for milky puddings, which is what I used. This is usually served at room temp or chilled, by which time it's thickened up more too. Thanks Annacia for a lovely dessert :)

I'm used to making milk puddings having grown up with them so I was looking forward to this one. I couldn't get the pudding to thicken up with the stated amount of rice flour and ended up grabbing some arrowroot and adding that to it. The rose water wasn't overpowering which was good but this is a very sweet dessert and if I were to make it again I would reduce the amount of sugar. Too sweet for my tastebuds but the kids liked it.

I actually ground my own minute rice and this turned out delicious!! I third the recipe for just myself. ZWT3