This recipe is very slightly adapted from another of my favourite food blogs, Juls’ Kitchen. The original is slightly lemony, with a lemon peel being heated in the milk for the rice, but I couldn’t get any untreated lemons so I omitted that. Instead, I added vanilla paste for extra flavour.

Makes 24

Pastry shells

200g plain flour
100g whole rice flour
150g sugar
150g butter, diced
scant tsp baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg

Sift plain flour with rice flour and mix with sugar, salt and baking powder. Add the diced butter and rub all the ingredients together with your fingertips until it resembles soft crumbs.

Beat the egg in a bowl, then add it to the flour mixture and keep rubbing the ingredients with your fingertips until you have a nice and smooth ball of dough. Flatten the dough into a disc, wrap well in plastic and let it rest in the fridge.

Filling

1l whole milk
300g pudding rice
1 vanilla bean
6 tablespoons sugar
1 tsp vanilla paste or essence
scant tsp baking powder
2 eggs, separated

Pour the milk into a large heavy-based pot and bring it to a simmer with the vanilla bean. When it starts simmering, remove the vanilla bean, add rice, stir, cover, turn heat to minimum and let it cook, about 15 to 20 minutes – the time will depend on the kind of rice you use but it must be thoroughly cooked, soft and sticky. You’ll need to stir it occasionally so the rice doesn’t settle into something resembling a brick.

Remove from the heat and stir in 3 tablespoons of sugar. Let it cool completely, but keep it covered so it doesn’t dry out.

Preheat oven to 170°C and take pastry from fridge to come to room temperature.

When the rice is cold, stir in the vanilla paste, egg yolks, baking powder and the rest of the sugar.

Beat the egg whites to soft peaks and fold them gently into the rice.

Roll the pastry on a lightly floured surface into a 5 mm thick sheet, cut using a cookie cutter (9-10cm works well) and line 24 buttered muffin moulds. The pastry will puff up when cooked, so it only needs to come 2/3 of the way up the sides. Re-roll and cut pastry scraps as needed. Prick the bottoms of the pastry shells with a fork.

Spoon the rice pudding into the pastry shells and bake for about 40 minutes until the rice tartlets are golden brown on the edges.

Cool and serve with a dusting of icing sugar.