Cake and Eat It: St. Clements rice pudding

Comfort food isn't a term I use often, but I can't think of a better way to describe rice pudding. It's a dish that's milkily redolent of Victorian nurseries and early bedtimes, which makes it seem a particularly appropriate pudding now that night sets in at 4pm. What better way to warm up your winter nights than with an old-fashioned, rib-sticking rice pudding?

It's a dish that has a long history in Britain. In the 15th century rice pudding was boiled in a pot (oven space being at a premium) with almond milk and sweetened with honey. I've made rice pudding this way and there were two downsides. The first was that every time I lifted the lid off the pan the pudding would seethe and spit dairy all over me – the hob took a lot of scouring afterwards. The second was that there was no skin, and every pudding fanatic knows that the skin of a rice pudding is The Best Bit. As the cook, I always claim it as my prize and peel the skin off the pudding to eat before dishing up the sticky grains of rice.

An old-fashioned, oven-baked rice pudding is also a very good-tempered thing to cook. It takes just a few minutes to stir together and then you can slowly bake it in the oven while a warming winter stew simmers away above it. On cold days and dark frosty nights, nothing tastes better.

This version has abandoned the usual, bland vanilla flavouring for a bit of citrus zip. The orange and lemon peel add a tiny dash of tartness, which helps loosen up the richness and makes that final spoonful easier to finish.

You can swap 200–300ml of the milk for double cream if you'd like a more luxurious texture, but I enjoy the slight stodginess of a milk-only pudding – especially if it comes with a little pool of cold cream once it's dished up. A dollop of lemon curd adds a final layer of sweet-sharpness to round the pudding off.

St Clements rice pudding

5 minutes to prepare, 2 hours to cook

Serves 4–6

Cook's note: Suitable for vegetarians

20g butter

110g pudding rice

50g caster sugar

Finely grated zest of 1 lemon and 1 orange

800ml whole milk

Lemon curd and single cream, to serve

Preheat the oven to gas mark 3/150°C/fan oven 130°C. Grease a 1 litre ovenproof dish with half the butter. Add the pudding rice, caster sugar, lemon and orange zest and pour in the milk. Stir to mix and dot the top with the remaining butter.

Bake for 2 hours or until the pudding is just set but still wobbles a little in the middle when you shake it. Spoon into 4 small, warm serving bowls (here, the cook can claim their privilege and eat the skin, should they be inclined that way) and top with a spoonful of lemon curd and a little pool of cream to serve.