I used to live in Florence, Italy, where every morning I looked forward to getting up and going to my favorite pasticceria to have a little budino di riso for breakfast. Budino di riso, or rice pudding, is what everyone in Florence calls it, but it is actually a dense little oval cake with powdered sugar on top, that when still warm from the oven, reveals a deliciously moist rice pudding center. It became such a love of mine that to this day whenever I go to Florence the first thing I must do when I arrive in the city is have a budino di riso. <br /> <br />Missing my little budino, one day I decided to try and make one back here in the U.S. I scoured cookbooks in English and Italian for recipes, even going back to an Italian copy of the famous 19th century cookbook by Artusi, The Science of Cooking and The Art of Eating Well. But the only thing I could find was the popular torta di riso or crostata di riso, which is more of a simple pastry shell with rice pudding in the center. There seemed to be no "official" recipe for this treat. <br /> <br />I turned to the Internet. It seemed my little obsession was also shared by many Italians, for whom the recipe also proved to be just as elusive. This idiosyncratic oval budino seemed to be a lost art, giving way to the fast-paced, flat and round world of the crostata. I found chat rooms of desperate appeals, failed attempts, and heated debate. Getting the cake "crust" right was a quandary, as was the consistency of the rice pudding. Do you cook the rice first and then add the other ingredients? Or do you do it all at once? Do you add pastry cream? There were several schools of thought. And no one could find those little oval molds. <br /> <br />I finally landed on a creative exchange between Evellino (in Turin), Titty (in Naples), Candy (in Pisa) and Evellino's mom in Florence who served as the judge. Here is my take, with meyer lemon, cardamom and anisette replacing the vanilla bean and rum liqueur flavoring found in those recipes. In the best tradition of Italian cooking, where the "official" recipes are passed on from friend to friend, and mother to daughter, I pass this on to you.

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