This warm and creamy coconut rice pudding is a the perfect comfort dessert. It's made with fragrant kaffir lime and coconut milk. Topped with vanilla and brown sugar pineapple, it's family friendly and vegan. Ready in 25 minutes.
Okay. We're throwing it right back to 1980 over here with our rice pudding. But we've definitely given it an update! This is one of my favourite desserts of all time. I've been making it for years, and it is a true favourite. This week I'm 4 for 4 on simple no messing about recipes. And this is one of the easiest. I've done the usual step by step photos, but you won't really need them. This recipe is as straight forward as they come.
What I almost forgot to tell you was that you can totally go straight to the low fat coconut milk with this recipe. Absolutely no need to go the whole hog on this one. There's so much else going on, that you won't notice that it's low fat!
When ever you make rice pudding it's such a great idea to use arborio rice. That's the rice that you use for rissotto. There's a couple reasons for this. First being that we want to save some moola and only be picking up 1 type of rice on our weekly grocery run. Reason 2 is that arborio is meant to be used in a very different application than regular rice. It's not meant to absorb all the liquid it's cooked in but, regular rice is.
How to Make Coconut & Lime Rice Pudding
Choose a heavy pan with a wide surface area
Add your liquid and kaffir lime. We're using a mix coconut milk and cashew milk to keep it as a vegan dessert, but you can easily use the same quantity of milk.
The rice needs to cook on a low simmer for about 25 minutes, while you stir occasionally. This is a pretty low maintenance dessert. You may be tempted to keep cooking the rice out longer, because it may look a little loose. Don't be tempted. As the pudding cools, it thickens and starts to set up. If you cook it out too long, it will get too thick.
Now, the crowning glory of this dessert. The brown sugar pineapple. You can use any sugar for this. I just used demerara because I love the flavour of it mixed with the pineapple and vanilla. Again, low maintenance. Add pineapple, sugar and vanilla. If your pineapple isn't really juicy, then you can add a splash of water.
This dessert does really well being made ahead of time. Just pack the rice pudding and the pineapple in separate containers and they can be made about 2 days ahead of time. Perfect if your entertaining and want something simple but with a bit of a showoff streak!
Kaffir Lime Rice Pudding
Ingredients
- 1 cup arborio rice
- 1 400 g tin coconut milk
- 600 ml cashew milk or any milk you choose
- 1 kaffir lime leaf
- ½ cup sugar
For the pineapple
- ½ pineapple diced
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1 vanilla pod
- coriander
Instructions
- In a wide heavy sauce pan place the rice, sugar, lime leaf and milk and place on a medium heat. Bring up to the boil and turn down to a simmer for 20-25 minutes stirring occasionally.
For the pineapple
- Place the pineapple, sugar and vanilla pod in a small sauce pan, over a low to medium heat. Cook until the pineapple is juicy and the brown sugar is melted and starting to caramelise. About 10 minutes.
- Spoon the rice pudding into glasses or dessert bowls. Top with the pineapple and some cilantro and lime zest.
Nutrition
Sarah says
I just made this amazing rice pudding! Delicious and easy. Thank you.
Debs says
Thanks so much Sarah! So glad you loved it. It's one of our favourites.
Julie says
I’ve got a couple questions. First, there are no directions about how to handle the lime leaf. Do you mince it and add it to rice pudding ingredients or do you add it whole and then remove it when the pudding is cooked?Second, your photo of the finished dessert includes ingredients that aren’t in the recipe. There are small pinkish sprouts; what are they? There appear to be sugar crystals that were added after caramelising the pineapple.
I made this dessert and really liked it, but I wasn’t happy with how the lime leaf played in its flavour. I’d also like to up my presentation game by including all of the garnished you used in your photo
Debs says
Hi Julie. I just add the lime leaf whole so that it's easy to pick out once the rice is cooked. There's no extra sugar on the pineapple, it's the vanilla seeds from the bean that gets added when you cook the pineapple. If you can't get a hold of vanilla beans, or they're really pricey, then you may want to check Amazon for some vanilla bean powder. It will show up like little flecks like in the photos. The pink sprout is a micro radish leaf. I grow them on my window sill at home. Not sure if you'd be able to find them in stores. But a viola flower would look gorgeous on these, and they should be very easy to get hold of.
As for not being happy with the lime leaf, you may want to leave it out if you're not a fan. It can become a little too perfumy for some people. Hope you make this again. Let me know how it goes! Thanks so much for reading and rating the recipe!