Risalamande — Print Recipe — The Culinary Codex

Cold creamy rice pudding folded with whipped cream, vanilla, and chopped almonds, served with warm cherry sauce — Denmark's essential Christmas dessert.

Ingredients

200g short-grain rice
800ml whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split
3 tbsp sugar
300ml heavy cream, whipped
100g chopped almonds
1 whole almond
Cherry sauce: 500g pitted cherries, 100g sugar, 1 tbsp cornstarch, 100ml water

Instructions

1 Cook rice in milk with vanilla bean and sugar, stirring often, until thick and creamy (25-30 min). Cool completely.
2 Fold whipped cream and chopped almonds into the cold rice pudding. Hide one whole almond in the mixture.
3 For cherry sauce: simmer cherries with sugar and water for 10 min. Thicken with cornstarch mixed in cold water.
4 Serve rice pudding cold in a large bowl with warm cherry sauce on the side.
5 The person who finds the whole almond wins a prize — traditionally a marzipan pig.
6 Players must keep poker faces to avoid revealing they found the almond too early.

Did You Know?

The hidden almond game causes such excitement at Danish Christmas dinners that families have been known to argue about whether someone swallowed the almond to avoid detection.