Orange Cinnamon Rice Pudding

This year, for SP's birthday dessert, I chose to not make a cake. It seems odd to me to not make him a birthday cake, but a cake is usually too large for both of us, plus, I wasn't really excited about cake. I decided to instead make him one of his favorite desserts: rice pudding. Specifically, Orange-Cinnamon Rice Pudding.

No special ingredients so I didn't tip him off with an odd request on the grocery list. Even the huge amount of milk for the weekend was somewhat explained away by the fact that we were making mac & cheese. The mascarpone could have been for in a cake or in a frosting, so even though he raised his eyebrows and started trying to guess, he didn't figure it out.

My mom came over to help me. I was afraid that with 4+ cups of liquid in a saucepan, I might spill hot liquid on myself. Plus, it's hard for me to see down into a pan on the stove and to do a lot of stirring and not burn my arm on the side of the pan or the burner grate itself. Mom was in charge of stirring. I stirred for about 5 minutes and that was it. She kept asking me how it looked so I'd take a quick photo by holding my phone up, somewhat blindly snapping, and then looking at the result.

It took a while, longer than the recipe says, but that's probably because I like to cook rice, especially arborio, very slowly to make sure the rice is fully cooked and not crunchy (we've ended up with some crunchy risottos) but it finally looked like what I suspect rice pudding looks like. Personally, I don't like rice pudding, so I'm not even sure what the end result is supposed to look/taste like.

Lots of orange zest, 2 cinnamon sticks, a little mascarpone - SP said the rice pudding was excellent and that it was the perfect consistency. He may have just been being a good husband, but my dad also said that it was really good, better than any he's had out at restaurants.

So I think this recipe is a keeper, even if it is only for SP. I tried a bite and it has a phenomenal orange and cinnamon flavor and it seemed like pudding, just pudding with rice chunks in it.

Recipe here.