We continue the rice theme in the Gutsy Cooks Club. This week it was to “make it sweet “ and the options were so good, that it was very hard to narrow it down to just one.

I’m a die-hard fan of rice pudding – side note: one day I will post my mother’s rice pudding in order to put all the other puddings to shame out there – Of course I will do this as soon as get her to share the recipe.

But, back to rice pudding. If you see the options, all were a variation of rice pudding. And boy did I want to make each and everyone one of them. It really came down between the Rice Pudding ice pops (hello!! Rice Pudding Ice Pops… show me a person that would not be jumping up and down for one of those) and the intriguing Coconut Rice Fingers.

I bet you can guest which ones I went with?

Coconut + rice pudding + crunchy filo = match.made.in.heaven!

Plus, I could not help fall in love with the story behind them. A grandmother’s recipe will ALWAYS have a huge advantage in my kitchen.

It also helped that I had a package of Filo sheets in my refrigerator, so I did not have to leave my house at all today to make them.

I started making the coconut rice pudding, because it needs to be cold when you built the fingers. It took me less than 20 minutes to have it ready.

I’m not going to lie, I ate about 3 4 spoonful’s of the stuff during it’s cooling off period. Ok, I ate more, but it was for quality control, so it was necessary.

I knew it was going to be good.

The next part was dealing with the filo. Have you worked with filo before? The first couple of times, it’s a bit frustrating. The dough is so delicate and if you don’t keep a wet towel on them, they dry up so fast. But, once you get into the grove, you can have all of your fingers ready to go into the oven in less than 15 minutes.

A note on the oven - The recipe calls for an oven temperature of 220C in a fan-forced oven. Fan-forced ovens are also known as convection ovens; for a conventional oven, try baking this dessert at about 400F for the full cooking time of 20 minutes, or even a bit longer.

Mine were crispy and golden at the 30-minute mark.

The last thing to this glorious recipe is pouring the lemon-y syrup. I of course used lime and lemon, to make it a bit more tart that sweet.

Verdicts:

I just love when a recipe hits a home run. And this one did in all the innings. The coconut pudding is creamy, not too sweet and just right in the consistency department. The filo comes out golden and crispy giving you the crunch to counter-balance the creamy warm pudding filling. And the lemon-lime syrup is the perfect balance to make this rich dessert feel light and refreshing.

Tom – he ate 4 of them, by the time I finished writing this post.

Oh, wait make that FIVE.

The best part of this dessert is the fact that you can change up the flavors of your pudding – don’t like coconut? Replace it with cinnamon or sweeten condensed milk. Or dulce de leche, can you imagine it? Or you can even go the fruit route add cranberries? Apricots? Figs? Jam?

What ever you do, you are going to keep this one in rotation; it’s just too good to not do it again, and again.

You can find the recipe at wonderful Greedy Gourmand blog.

And of course check out my fellow Gutsy Cooks to see what recipes called them to their kitchen this week.