Cranberry Orange Rice Pudding

As sad and depressing as posting about warm comfort food in JUNE is, I can't seem to help myself.
It's has been a gray, damp and chilly spring and today is the first day of Summer. It's still gray, damp and chilly.
So I'm popping a little bit of sunshine into my morning with this recipe.
The zest is what's doing it for me right now.

Cranberry Orange Rice Pudding
-1 cup white rice (I've used jasmine today, but you could use an arborio or basmati or a short grain brown rice even-although the brown rice will change the cooking time. Probably double it.)
-2 1/2 cups milk or alternative (we use Vanilla Silk)
-Zest from one orange
-1/2 cup dried cranberries (or fresh if you've got them. Even defrosted frozen cranberries would probably be amazing. Definitely zippier than the dried version)
[Ooh I might have to try that next time!]
-2 or 3 tablespoons of real maple syrup. (Or sugar, whatever you've got that you like.)

1. rinse your rice in a medium sized pot.
2. add the milk and stir.
3. bring to a boil while you zest your orange.
4. add your orange zest and maple syrup.
5. once the rice and milk are boiling, stir it up again so your rice doesn't stick to the pot and burn (not tasty), cover and reduce heat to low.
6. cook for 2o minutes.

I am a bit torn on when to add the cranberries, if you want them to swell up and really cook up you can add them at the same time as the zest and maple syrup. Or you can wait until the timer goes, add the dried cranberries, throw in a bit more milk and cook for another 5 minutes or so. -I think that if I were using fresh or frozen cranberries I would add them in at the beginning to really get the flavour dancing.

This recipe is really forgiving.
I have also made this without the zest and cranberries, substituting them with candied ginger WHICH IS AMAZING.

But we had no candied ginger around. There you go.

This recipe makes enough for 4 hungry people or 2 giants.
You can also refrigerate the leftovers and reheat them with a little more milk the next day. Good as new!