Rice pudding

Couldn't be simpler really. 1 pint full fat milk, 2oz pudding rice, 2oz sugar. Cook in a casserole dish for 2 - 3 hours at Gas 2 or 3, 140 or 150C. You could add a knob of butter and a grating of nutmeg on top if you like.

Dad used to eat the skin, which was just fine because it used to make me gag. I only discovered the joys of pudding skin many years later.

So how did I get it so wrong last year? I put the pudding in to cook as per instructions above. I woke with a start at about 11pm, some 6 hours after I put the pudding in the oven. OMG! Nothing for it but to scrape the burn offering out in the morning, after it had cooled down.

But hang on. I looked inside the crockpot to find yes, some of it had burnt round the outside, but in the middle it was fairly solid and a deep golden yellow colour. Maybe it was salvageable?

What I'd made, inadvertently, was a caramelised condensed milk rice pudding, with all the yummy flavour of caramel from the burnt sugar, and of condensed milk as what had not been absorbed by the rice had been boiled away. I spooned what wasn't too burnt out, and poured a little top of the milk over it, and we had it for supper. "You must burn the pudding more often" said Hubby.

So don't assume that because something looks ruined that it necessarily is. Often something can be salvaged from it. Like the cake I made without any eggs. I cut it up and used it as the base for a trifle. Sometimes you can make something from the most unpromising disaster with a little ingenuity.