More Late Night Cooking

I have a handful of recipes from my mother. Mom has maybe a dozen recipes that she has down to an art. They tend to involve a large pot of something; macaroni and cheese, chili, "lazy lasagna". On the desert end of the spectrum she has three, Jewish Apple Cake, Old Black Joe Cake (it involves coffee and an angel food cake mold) , and Rice pudding.

I have the recipe for rice pudding and decided to try it tonight for the third time. Here's the thing though, the recipe calls for condensed milk and condensed milk scares the hell out of me. On some visceral level it just doesn't seem right. So I got to thinking; the Mom's recipe runs as follows.

Mom .....................................................Mine

1 cup of milk .......................................1 cup of milk
1 cup of sugar ......................................1 1/3 Cups of Sugar
1 14 oz can of condensed milk ..........1 pint of Heavy Cream
2 eggs.................................................... 2 eggs
2 tbl of corn starch .............................2 tablespoons of corn starch
1 cup of rice.......................................... 1 cup of rice
................................................................2 Tsp Vanilla
1. Make 1 cup of rice to 4 cups of water; bring to boil then let simmer for 25 minutes.
2. In a separate bowl blend 2 eggs and cornstarch; set aside.

3. in a large pot mix sugar and milk; heat slowly to high stirring constantly (start on low and every minute raise the temperature a notch or two continuously stirring).
4. When the mixture is steaming hot (NOT BOILING) Mix in egg/cornstarch with milk blend thoroughly.
5. Add Cream.
6. On large spoon full at a time add the cooked rice stirring constantly.
7. Stir until mixture thickens (10 minutes) ; you know because it starts bubbling.
8. Lower the temperature while stirring until you reach low then remove from heat and put rice pudding in a container; leave uncovered until cool.

The problem is this is not a pudding it's a custard. That happens to have rice in it. So the condensed milk has nothing to do with the custard setting; that's taken care of by the eggs and cornstarch. So I just got rid of the dairy abomination and replaced it with a pint of heavy cream. To make up for the ungodly sweetness of condensed milk I added another 1/3 cup of sugar and 2 Tsp of vanilla.
It is absolutely delicious. I think cream must have been rather expensive or hard to come by so they started using condensed milk instead.
For good measure I'm also roasting a chicken stuffed with shitake mushrooms and basil but it is taking forever to get done. I'm convinced there is something wrong with our stove it takes upwards of two hours to roast a 3.5 lb chicken . I'll just eat some pudding while I wait.

~Eikon @ Midnight