Budino is a versatile Italian pudding with variations in texture and flavor. Traditional recipes use rice, semolina, or ricotta with ingredients like rum, raisins, and vanilla. Popular flavors include chocolate, lemon, and butterscotch.
Budino is a sweet Italian pudding known for its light but enveloping texture and intense flavour. This type of dessert gets its name simply from the Italian word for “pudding,” and different bakers can have their own unique takes on pudding recipes. Some variations have a thicker texture than others depending on the ingredients, such as eggs and cake flour, making this dish versatile. Different textures are often created with the inclusion of rice, grits or cottage cheese. Popular flavors for this dessert include chocolate, lemon, and butterscotch.
Traditional Italian cooking often calls for the pudding to be made with a more pastry-like than cake-like texture, although the recipe’s exact ingredients can vary across regions and family traditions. A classic version originating in Northern Italy is known as rice pudding, which gets its texture and flavor from a blend of boiled rice, rum, raisins, candied orange peel, and vanilla. Successfully bringing these flavors together requires uncooked rice which will release starch when heated in boiling milk; the key to getting the right custard is to cook the rice in just the milk until tender but not completely softened. The rest of the ingredients are then usually added before the rice can fully finish cooking.
Some Italian bakers who prefer this dessert without the boiled rice substitute semolina, which is a type of wheat grain also used for some types of pasta and cereals. Semolina pudding is a recipe that calls for this ingredient along with raisins and rum, but often not with vanilla extract or candied orange. This version has a slightly different texture, and usually needs to be cooked further in small dessert pans once the ingredients have been heated and mixed together in a pot on the stovetop.
The lemon zest flavor in this dish is usually found in ricotta pudding, a slightly smoother recipe version. This pudding is often made by first straining out any lumps of unsweetened cottage cheese and then whipping it with egg yolks and sugar. Ground sweet and bitter almonds are also added to further enhance the taste of the lemon.
Butterscotch pudding is a rich, smooth pudding made from heavy cream usually combined with cornstarch or cake flour, dark brown sugar, and dark rum. Separated egg yolks and whole milk help give this variation its thicker texture as well. The chocolate flavor can be created as an alternative by adding unsweetened grated chocolate and vanilla extract in place of the rum and brown sugar.
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