Risalamande with cherry sauce is the most wonderful Christmas dessert. It is a classic Danish christmas dessert that is especially served on Christmas Eve and for christmas lunches. Here you get my recipe for the classic danish risalamande that I serve every year for my family.
Risalamande with cherry sauce
Risalamande is a classic dessert that you eat in most Danish homes on Christmas Eve and for Christmas lunches. The name comes from the French word riz à l'amande, which means rice with almonds. The dish has a French-sounding name, even though it is Danish.
Risalamande is actually a fairly simple dessert. It consists of rice porridge in which you are mixing whipped cream, sugar, almonds and vanilla. You usually serve it cold and with cold or warm cherry sauce on top. I myself prefer to warm the cherry sauce.
Danish risalamande recipe
It is quite popular in many families in Denmark to make a big pot of rice porridge on the day before Christmas Eve. You eat it with cinnamon sugar and a dollop of butter in the evening. The rest of the rice porridge you use on Christmas Eve to make risalamande.
It's very smart, as you get rid of the trouble of cooking the rice porridge at the same time as you have to roast the perfect Christmas duck and many other important things for Christmas Eve. Here you get my recipe for risalamande as I like it.
A whole almond and a almond present
When you are making your risalamande it is very important to hide one whole almond in the risalamande before serving. The one that gets the whole almond also gets the almond present.
Risalamande
Ingredients
Rice porridge
- 180 g porridge rice
- 2 dl water
- 1 liter whole milk
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- 1-2 vanilla pods
- 1 pinch of salt, can be omitted
risalamande
- 150 g almonds, blanched
- 40 g icing sugar
- 5 dl whipping cream
Served with
- cherry sauce
Instructions
Rice porridge
- Halve the vanilla bean and scrape out the seeds. Spread them in a little sugar.
- Pour water and rice into a pot and bring to the boil and cook for about 2-3 minutes.
- Add the milk and bring the porridge to the boil while stirring. Put the vanilla beans and the empty vanilla pod into the pan.
- Cook the porridge under the lid on low heat.
- Stir it regularly so that the milk does not burn at the bottom. The porridge is ready when it has boiled for approximately 40 minutes.
- When you have a finished rice pudding, put it in the fridge so it gets completely cold. Feel free to make it the day before you have to make the risalamande.
Risalamande
- Remove the skin from the almonds by pouring boiling water over, drain the water and pour over with cold water. Repeat this 2 times. Then you can easily remove the skin from then almonds.
- Chop the almonds them either finely or coarsely. It depends on what you like best. Stir them into the bowl with the cold rice pudding.
- Add icing sugar to the porridge.
- Whip the cream to a light foam in another bowl.
- Spread the lightly whipped cream a little at a time into the porridge, and carefully turn it around until it is completely distributed.
- Refrigerate the risalamande dessert until ready to eat (preferably at least 2-3 hours). Serve it with warm or cold cherry sauce.
If you want the recipe in Danish you can find it on my Danish food blog.
Cherrysauce for risalamande
The most common sauce for risalamande is the cherry sauce. There are actually quite a few other variations that you can try with your rice ala mande.
Orange sauce
Raspberry sauce
Strawberry sauce
Caramel sauce
Skinless almonds for risalamande
For rice ala mande you need lots of almomonds. And for this wonderful Christmas dessert, it is important that the skin is removed from the almonds. This is done by putting the almonds in boiling water, after which you can slip the skin off the almond.
Leftovers of the risalamande
At Christmas, we often cook a lot of food, and in order for the food not to go to waste, we have to find something to use the leftovers for. Remains of rice ala mande can, for example, used for the danish klatkager or waffles. You can also easily just eat the leftovers of the dessert the next day, just as you did on Christmas Eve or for Christmas lunch.
FAQ for the recipe
I would not recommend freezing the risalamande. There is a high probability that the whipping cream will separate and it will be watery in consistency.
Stick to the shelf life of your whipping cream.
I usually cook the rice porridge on the 23rd of December, and on the morning of the 24th I then make the risalamande. That's how I think it will be best. But if you can't manage to make the dessert on the 24 December, you can make it completely on 23 December.
Please allow the dessert to stand for 2-3 hours before you serve it.
I would definitely recommend using a vanilla pod, but I also know it can be an expensive affair. You can therefore replace the vanilla pod with vanilla powder - and you can also use vanilla sugar if necessary.
Although the name sounds very French, it is actually a genuine Danish recipe. It is also only in Denmark that we eat it on Christmas Eve.
There are many different ways to spell the classic danish christmas dessert. A single search on Google offers, among other things, on rice a la mande, rice à l'amande, rice ala mande. But I've read up that risalamande is the correct way to write it, so I stick with that.
Translated it means rice with almonds. And that really describes very well what it consists of.
Leave a Reply