Budino con carote e anice stellato

Before I continue my story about Germany, I have to write a post about a pudding that I made two days ago. I prepared it on purpose thinking I wanted to make something with a lot of milk, and healthy in general, for the 'Beautiful Bones' event hosted by Foodblogga this month. However, we got to eat this dessert only last night, and so I couldn't post the recipe with pictures on time for the deadline of the event. The roundup is already up! Oh well. I'll ask if this can be a super late entry, but in any case, please go check the roundup out, because it's wonderful!


Budino con carote e anice stellato / Carrot and star anise pudding
I invented this recipe, based on a traditional pudding recipe from Piemonte. The original version is Bunet, which I already posted about here, and has chocolate, coffee and amaretti cookies. But I wanted to have a completely different and fresher and healthier taste, so I substituted the cookies for grated carrots, and I boiled star anise in the milk for a while to give its taste to the pudding. I didn't use chocolate or coffee. The result was really delicious, I was very happy.
Ingredients:
4 eggs
3 small carrots
1/2 liter milk
4 tbsps brown sugar
4 tbsp white sugar
5 star anise pods
1 tsp vodka or rum or whatever liquor you like

Boil the star anise pods in the milk. In the meanwhile, grate the carrots (I used a food processor), and then add them to the milk. Add 4 tbsp brown sugar to the milk and carrots, and keep cooking for ~30 min. After this, remove the anise pods and let the milk and carrots cool down. In the meanwhile, separate the yolks from the whites. Beat the yolks and 2 tbsp white sugar, then add the liquor, and the cold milk and carrot mixture. Beat the eggwhites until firm (add a tiny amount of salt to help this). Gently fold the eggwhites in the rest of the liquid mixture.
Caramelize 2 tbsp of white sugar on the bottom of a baking pan (shaped as those used for bread loaves). Pour the mixture on top of the caramelized sugar in the pan, and place in a larger pan filled with hot water (at a level such that it arrives at about 3/4 of the height of the baking pan with the liquid mixture inside). Put this sort of 'double pan' in the oven that must be preheated at 370 F, for 40 minutes. Serve cold.

It was really good. Next time I make it, I'll use a smaller pan, or I'll double the doses, so that it will become thicker. Also, I think if one has time to let the milk cook longer, and cool down longer, less anise pods could be used, as they would have a longer time to infuse their flavor to the milk.