Cakes & Bakes: Slow-cooker chocolate rice pudding

With the recent cold and snowy conditions outside, we’ve been ramping up our dinners with hot desserts. We’ve enjoyed home-made rice pudding twice this week; the first was a baked one, cooked in the oven. The one we’re sharing here is a chocolate rice pudding, made in a slow-cooker.

Rice pudding is probably one of the most ‘un-labour-intensive’ desserts you can make. You practically switch on your slow-cooker, pour all the ingredients into the bowl, give it a stir, put the lid on and leave it for a couple of hours. You can lift the lid, take a peek and give it a stir if you want… but even that isn’t completely necessary.

After 3 or so hours, you’ll have hot, creamy, chocolatey rice pudding ready to enjoy. I like to eat mine hot and quite thick, Justin prefers his cool and a thinner consistency. How do you prefer yours?

The good thing about making rice pudding in a slow-cooker (rather than baking in an oven) is that, as it’s cooking, if it’s looking to thick for your taste, you can add a little bit more milk and stir every so often to make sure it’s just as you like it.

Make sure you use short-grain pudding rice or Italian Arborio rice. It’s a lot more absorbent than long grain rice and produces a creamy pudding with firm grains.

Click here or on the image below to save my slow-cooker chocolate rice pudding to Pinterest

Slow-cooker chocolate rice pudding

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Cook Time 3

Course Dessert

Cuisine British

Servings 4 servings

Equipment

Slow cooker

Ingredients

50 g unsalted butter
100 g pudding rice
500 ml milk full cream
3 tbsp cocoa powder
300 ml double cream
75 g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Turn on the slow-cooker to high and add the butter
When the butter has melted, add the pudding rice, stirring to coat all the grains
Add about a ¼ of the milk and stir
Once the slow-cooker contents have warmed up again, add the cocoa powder and stir well to combine
Pour in the rest of the milk, followed by the cream stirring to mix in. Put the lid on and let the contents warm up again
Once warm, add the caster sugar, stirring to dissolve
Stir in the vanilla extract. Replace the lid
Cook for 3 hours. After the first hour, you could stir the pudding to make sure the consistancy it to your liking. If it's too thick, add a little more milk and replace the lid. Repeat after another hour and again, just before it's finished cooking

Slow-cooker chocolate rice pudding ingredients

Keyword chocolate, rice, rice pudding

Price Points: Slow cookers

Autumn’s here, and it’s the perfect time for those comforting slow cooker dishes. Think about all those bubbling stews, casseroles and curries to be enjoyed. One of my favourite things to make in the slow cooker is tarka dhal to serve with a paratha and basmati rice.

There’s a huge range in prices, from less than twenty quid to almost two hundred. Personally, I’d pick the Swan Retro model; the cream colour would go with the rest of our kitchen décor and the huge 6.5 litre capacity means that I can cook up a big batch of my dhal and store most of it in the freezer divided up into 2-person portions.

Slow cooking is one of the most economical cooking methods. Even though you’re cooking for hours at a time, slow cookers don’t use much electricity. I’ve read that it uses about the same amount of juice as a single light bulb; whether that’s an old fashioned one or those new-fangled energy savers, I don’t know…

Breville VTP169 slow cooker, silver: £14.99, Robert Dyas
1.5 litre capacity
3 heat settings
Swan Retro SF17031CN slow cooker, cream: £39.99, Currys
6.5 litre capacity
3 heat settings
glass lid
Sage BPR700BSS The Fast Slow Pro slow cooker, brushed metal: £199.00, John Lewis
6 litre capacity
6 heat settings
Dual slow cooker and pressure cooker functions

shop slow cookers

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Prices & links correct at time of publication.