Christmas Calendar 17

Rice porridge. Most Finns love to eat it at Christmas time. I love it too but I have my own recipe. The traditional way to eat it is with butter and cinnamon sugar. I like to eat it with shaved almonds and vanilla sugar. I will share my recipe with you.

Ingredients:

- 2 dl of rice (I use puuroriisi but you can also use risotto rice)
- 1 liter of milk (I use full fat milk)
- 2 tbs of regular sugar and 1 tbs of vanilla sugar
- shavings of real butter
- shaved almonds

Put the rice in a casserole dish. Add the milk. Stir in the regular sugar and vanilla sugar. Put the butter shavings on top. Cover the casserole dish with a lid or aluminium foil. Put the casserole dish to a preheated 200 degree oven. After approximately 45 minutes I remove the aluminium foil and stir the content so the butter is mixed with the rest of the ingredients. I check and stir every 10 minutes until the rice has absorbed the milk and the porridge is thick and creamy.

Remove the casserole dish from the oven and serve the porridge with vanilla sugar and shaved almonds. That's how I like to eat my rice porridge. You can also add blueberries and/or other berries, pomegranate seeds, raisins, cinnamon sugar and butter (the traditional Finnish way), slices of mango or slices of peach. The options are limitless.

Here are some pictures of the result. My daughter 'assisted' me with the pictures. The pig was her idea.

The result. With pig.

My daughter's bowl.

Quite proud of my Christmas table decoration.

The mariskooli with a view of our yard.

Aaaand again: the mariskooli.