Can I Make The Rice Pudding Cake In Advance?

Our answer

Nigella's Rice Pudding Cake (from COOK, EAT, REPEAT) is a dessert that is made with arborio (risotto) rice that is cooked until soft and then mixed with egg yolks, butter and sugar. The mixture is then lightened with whisked egg whites before it is baked.

Nigella likes to serve the cake warm as it still has a very tender texture at this temperature and the cake can be baked up to 2 hours ahead of serving. The cake becomes firmer once it has been refrigerated, so Nigella prefers not to make it more than 2 hours in advance for its first outing. Unfortunately, rice is quite a high risk food to reheat, along with the eggs, so we can't recommend making the cake itself further in advance. If you were to reheat the cake then it will need to be reheated until piping hot all of the way though and this will actually overcook the rice and make the cake slightly dry. Also, if you cook just the rice in advance then you would need to chill it overnight and it becomes very firm and set, making it difficult to mix in the egg yolks and whisked whites. So the cake would have a different, firmer texture after baking and also the baking time will be different from chilled.