Coconut Rice Pudding

After days of blazing temperatures, hovering right around 100 degrees, it has finally cooled down bringing heavy rain! Hooray! Most people don’t cheer for cooler, wetter weather but I do! I have this narrow window of what I feel ideal temperature is and 90 degrees (and above) definitely does not fit into this range. Plus my garden and lawn were starting to dry up!

As a child, my aunt used to make a rice pudding dish that was one of my favorites but it was generally served cold. Naturally, when it is damp and cool my body demands warming foods. So this morning as I was brainstorming what to make I decided on a dairy-free hot rice pudding to warm my bones J. I also added flavors of vanilla and cinnamon for added comfort and spice and topped it off with raisins for sweetness.

Cinnamon is not only a spice used for culinary purposes but for health purposes too! Cinnamon can be used to lower cholesterol, regulate blood sugar, to stop medication-resistant yeast infections, increase libido and to prevent certain types of cancer. Cinnamon can be used in its whole form (a.k.a. cinnamon stick), ground or as an essential oil.

* You are more than welcome to use regular milk if you choose but know that the coconut milk does not make it taste coconut”y”.

Ingredients

1 cup of brown basmati rice (or any other long grain rice)

1 can of full fat coconut milk

1 cup of water

½ cup of raisins

2 tablespoons of maple syrup

2 teaspoons of pure vanilla

1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Directions

Bring the rice, coconut milk and water to a boil. Add the raisins and then cover and simmer until the rice is tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed (approximately 35 minutes). Remove from heat.

Add the maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon. Stir, serve and enjoy!