When you wake up in the morning do you let your day decide what sort of mood you’re going to be in? Or do you decide what sort of day YOU want to have?

Like, before you get up, you know pre-coffee, pre-anything…do you lay there thinking Fuck My Life, I’ve gotta drag myself out of bed now? EUGGGGGHHHH.
Or do you think FUCK YEAH! I’m super excited to be ALIVE!!
Or are your thoughts somewhere in between?

If you wake up thinking FML, it’s another crappy day on the hamster wheel of life; make a decision. Make a decision to eat flowers.

Yeah, that’s right, you heard me. I’m not afraid to be weird.
This dessert has fucking flowers in it.

Decide that you will brighten your day by making this dessert – because it WILL rock your world. Then you’ll have something delicious to look forward to. The Bad Mannered chefs (previously known as Thug Kitchen) say – and I fucking quote – ‘This dessert let’s you snack like you’re royalty’.

Who doesn’t want to tap into that sovereign energy throughout their day?

YOU rule your life. Fuck bad days!
No one’s got time for that shit.

Having this dessert waiting for you in the fridge for when you finish work and wind down, is like having a dirty little secret that no one else knows about. Like wearing your sexiest undies under your beige work clothes. Or going commando entirely.

(I see your imagination getting the better of you there, come back into the room. Get your mind out of the gutter and join the rest of us. Dude, I think you need more than dessert.)

So anyway, I decided to make this dessert one day when we were having company. It was some friends and their young kids. (I’m talking YOUNG. Like randomly-falling-over-when-walking-young. I’m talking drooling-young. This will be relevant for the story later on, got it?)

The jasmine rice pudding was super easy to make, BUT…I’d miscounted the amount of Jasmine tea bags I’d got. The recipe calls for 8, and I had…well, only 2 left. Some bastard had been drinking my tea without telling me. That shit’s as bad as putting an empty milk carton back in the fridge. Who are these thieving bastards?! And how did they get into my house and into my tea stash?!
(oh yeah, they’re my loving family. And also myself. I may have drunk a few cups and forgot about it. ahem.)

Okay, well we have no time for blame.

That particular tea is hard to get where I live, so rather than skip the dessert I thought fuck it, I’m going to make it anyway. Just with less tea bags. Hopefully the jasmine flavour of the rice will see us through.

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I did all the things I was meant to, adding sugar and rice in all the right places, and then I added in the tea bags. Now, colour me a crazy, but how the devil are you meant to stir and also have tea bags in there with all that heavy rice, without them breaking?

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First, the stitching came undone on one tea bag so it became one loooong tea bag instead of a nice little square. It was still intact though, but more like a long tube of tea. It sort of looked like a long soggy condom. Not what you imagine in your “regal” dessert, but I was ready to roll with it.
I can deal. No problem.

However, time went on, more stirring was had, and the tea bag eventually broke. Despite my efforts to be super gentle and delicate with the said tea bag. Maybe it was the delicate sensibilities of the flowers, I don’t know. Whatever the reason was, the tea was now out, and as you can ask any one of my LGBTQ+ friends, once you’re out, it’s not that easy to just go back in.

There were bits of tea everywhere, all mixed in with the rice. Hmmm. Unfortunate. I wasn’t really sure what this would do to the dessert. Only time and dinner guests would tell.

When it was done I was going to put it in the fridge to chill, but this lead to a semi-heated discussion about whether or not hot things belong in a fridge. Some people said the best way to avoid dying a painful food poisoning death, was to put it in the fridge STRAIGHT AWAY. No fucking time to dilly dally. Others said NOOOOOOO fucking WAY would that be wise, as all the other food would change temperature and try to kill you. I didn’t realise plant based foods could be so predatory and murderous.

We compromised, I stuck the rice in our outdoor bar which was colder, and once it was cool I plopped it in the fridge.
No one was murdered in cold blood by any food. All was well.

We sat down to eat and it was gooooooood. It was creamy and floral. Subtle (probably because 3/4 of the tea had been left out) but still decadent and fancy. Not some soggy stodgy-ass rice pudding your sweaty overweight aunt Matilda might have served you as a kid.

We sprinkled nuts and black sesame seeds on top to give it some crunch, and it was just lovely. My kid gave it a “solid 8” out of 10. he actually said that. The kid can’t tie his laces but he will give actual number ratings to everything I cook. On a daily basis.
Just imagine what that’s like for a minute, being scrutinised by a harsh and honest critic EVERY. DAMN. DAY.

We also discovered that it was really nice with ‘whipped cream’ (page 192 same book) on top, and a splodge of jam. That raised it to a 10 out of 10 according to my tiny in-house food critic.

I discovered after having MANY portions of this – and feeding it to the kids, who scarfed it like crazy asking for seconds and thirds – that it wasn’t just jasmine tea. It was green tea and Jasmine tea together in a single tea bag. Apparently the two had partnered up without telling anybody. Like two horny teenagers sharing a sleeping bag on a camping trip.

HOLD UP. Did you say green tea?
GREEN FUCKING TEA, DUDE.

Isn’t green tea super high in caffeine? you ask wide eyed.
Yes, yes it is. I answer drooping subserviently.

Did I feed this to my kid and my friends kids? Just before bedtime?
Yes, yes I did.

Will they sleep ever again?

Of course they will, I’d only used 2 bags. Thank fuck.
But can you imagine if they HADN’T?!

Now that would’ve been a real FML situation.