coconut mango rice pudding

I've been obsessed...I'm talking obsessed with rice pudding lately. As in every night I make myself a heaping bowl of pudding topped with whatever fixings we have at home. Instead of paying the crazy shipping fee to snag some great flavors from Rice to Riches, I decided to be a little ambitious by making some from scratch and adding my own little twist to a classic Rodelle's recipe.

While I love rice pudding on its on, I add a lot of toppings into my bowl to add extra texture. There's something about an extra crunch that makes it so good. So to make my own version of rice pudding I took inspiration from the traditional thai sticky rice mango pudding and the results were wonderful!!!

Use the Rodelle's recipe as a base, but make sure you also have 1 cinnamon stick, 1/2 cup of dried roasted coconut chips (shredded will work too), 1/4 cups of almonds and 1 cup of fresh chopped mangoes. Here are the tweaks to make:

• When boiling the milk and cooking rice, substitute the vanilla bean with a cinnamon stick and add coconut chips so that the rice is infused with the flavors.
• Continue to cook the rice as directed. (I love cinnamon so I also added some extra teaspoons of cinnamon into the mix)
• Spoon rice pudding into a bowl and top with mango, almonds...and if you're feeling a little adventurous top it all off with some cold coconut milk.

I loved making this dessert! It's so easy and fool proof. I'm definitely someone who can pass as a mediocre cook and desserts are not my forte, but I'm definitely going to be making this one again.

Thanks to Rodelle's for providing the Madascar Bourban Vanilla Extract and inspiring me to make a fun dessert!