Crispy and Creamy Rice Treat: Step by Step

Another cake from Desserts by Pierre Hermé by Dorie Greenspan; in French, he calls it Régal au Riz Basmati. There are six components: ladyfingers, lemon syrup, crunchies, rice pudding, chocolate cream and caramelized puffed rice. The madnessprocedure is described below:

The instructions contain a useful tip to pipe the bands first while the batter is at its fullest. I ran into trouble during baking: my top oven rack was too high and consequently browned the biscuits before they were fully baked.

 

Just a simple lemon zest infusion.

 

A clever way to tie in the ingredients in the form of a chocolate bar combining milk chocolate with puffed rice. There's some toasted chopped hazelnuts too in this mixture.

 

The pudding was quite time consuming. The rice is cooked with whole milk, cinnamon and lemon and must be cooled to 70°F. At that point, it is very stiff and congealed. The second step is to make a crème anglaise; don't skip straining it as such a small quantity of custard is easy to overcook. Gelatin is added at this point. When it too has cooled to 70°F, the mixtures are combined together with some whipped cream.

 

For assembly, the ladyfingers are brushed with the syrup and placed in a cake ring. The rice pudding goes in the bottom, then the crunchies, and then the other ladyfinger disc.

 

After the rice pudding has firmed up, the last component is a chocolate cream. Don't let it cool too much or it won't be pourable.

 

Making this finishing touch is optional in the recipe but highly recommended. The first step is to heat a wet sugar mixture to the firm ball stage (248°F) then stir in the Rice Krispies. After washing the extremely hot saucepan, you reheat the Rice Krispies again to caramelize them.

 

Cross-section of the finished cake. It's got loads of texture and all the components work really well together. catalepticat made this too.