Today’s blog will be me going through one of the tutorials here on Mibba, as it is my task on the April Activity Challenge! Which, by the way, I encourage you to join if you’re interested. It does end at the end of the month, however, but it doesn’t hurt to do some tasks and get yourself a new rank! ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و But something that doesn’t end at the end of the month is a lovely club called Mibba’s Round Robin Story Club! It’s great for earning yourself some comments and getting to read some new stuff!
Also, no pressure, but if anyone wants to be pals on here, totally add me! I’d love some new Mibba friends on here and see when y’all post stuff! Especially since Mibba’s site issues still won’t let us see recently posted/updated stories and blogs, I’d love to have friends and see y’all!
Anyways, so today I made horchata! This tutorial was written by klaus hargreeves. so thank you so much for the recipe! If you don’t know what horchata is, it’s “a delicious rice-based drink and a type of agua fresca. Aqua fresca in Spanish means “fresh water,” and typically is made with fruits, flowers, or seeds mixed with water and sugar. Horchata is one of the popular aqua frescas and can be bought in Mexican restaurants or bodegas.”
I’m Mexican American, so growing up I’ve drank horchata. We never had it homemade at the house, but one of the bodegas by my house sells horchata. However, I’m not super fond of that one since I think they used the powder mixture, which is like kool-aid where you pretty much just add sugar and water and they have a machine you pour it out of that’ll keep it mixed and cold. Other than having it there, I’ve only drunk it on the rare occasion when we go to Mexican restaurants. Lately, I’ve been in the mood for it, so this came at a great time!
Ingredients:
• 1 cup of white long grained rice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• ½ cup of chopped, raw almonds
• ¼ tablespoon of ground cinnamon (to garnish if desired)
• 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
• 1 cup of sugar (⅔ cup if you want it less sweet)
• ⅓ cup of brown sugar
• 1 can/12 ounces of evaporated milk
• 1 ½ cup of milk (any of your choice)
• 1 liter (4 cups) of water
Real tea, I didn’t follow the instructions thoroughly but the results were great either way!!
So I stuck with the 1 cup of rice, but I didn’t put the cinnamon stick and chopped almonds since I didn’t have them in my pantry. I did substitute the cinnamon stick with ground cinnamon, I sprinkled it into the rice and mixed it in. They don’t specify how much water to have to fill in, so I just put it a couple of inches over the rice. I forgot to leave it soaking overnight, so I put it in this morning and had it soak for like four hours. They recommended five to eight hours if not overnight, but your girl was impatient, haha. But it was still good!
While it was soaking, I was doing some cleaning and I figured I would have the sugar ready. So in a bowl, I prepped 1 cup of sugar, and I accidentally also did 1 cup of brown sugar instead of ⅓ cup. I zoned out and the hole for the bag of brown sugar was too small, I didn’t feel like putting it back so I settled for that 1 cup. I also put about ½ teaspoon of ground cinnamon in the sugar mixture and mixed it in the bowl.
So once I got impatient with soaking it, I drained the water out and put the mixture in the blender with the evaporated milk. I did it parts as they recommended because my blender is a little old and the blades aren’t as good as they used to be. At first, I just evaporated milk and the mixture in the blender. But then, eventually, I did add a bit of water as I was blending it in parts. I also ended up using 2 cans of evaporated milk, which kind of prompted me to use a bit of water. So with me adding some water, I also didn’t end up adding that liter of water.
I also used a cheesecloth because when I blended, in the bottom of the blender would be blended and gritty rice. So I would squeeze the access milk out of it, and I’d move the gritty bits into a container so that once all of the rice was blended, I’d blend the gritty bits again with water and evaporated milk.
I strained the water like they said, to make sure no grainy bits were in there. Fortunately, there were none! I moved the mixture in this large mixing bowl instead of the pitcher. In the pitcher, I put maybe 1 ½ cup of warm water first, so that I could mix it with the sugar and have it dissolve. Then I put in the water mixture, although not all of it! I saved probably half of it because I still needed to put milk in it and it was already a lot (probably due to me adding water in the blender).
I wanted to use almond milk since I didn’t add the chopped almonds and we had some in the fridge. But I ended up going with 2% milk anyway since we keep getting donated milk from dispensaries. They give us like 2 full gallons of milk and we don’t really consume a lot of milk, so I didn’t want them going to waste since they were going to expire soon. I didn’t measure it out, to be honest, haha. I just poured whatever was left to fill the pitcher. The same goes with the vanilla extract, I just kind of dumped a bit into the mix.
Normally, horchata comes out like white due to the milk, but like kind of a clear-looking white since it’s mixed with water. But it actually came out a little tan-ish, pearlish just because I put that cup of brown sugar. Overall, I really liked it, especially with a bunch of ice! :D
The only thing annoying about horchata (kind of in general, not this recipe specifically), is that if you drink it cold and you have it sitting it in for a while, there’s something that sits in the bottom of the cup. Other than cinnamon, I think it’s the rice. For this recipe, it might be it but in the bodega, since they use that powder shit, some of that mix sits in the bottom.
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Overall, I loved the recipe and so did my mom, she drank two cups! Hope everyone has a good day/evening! And if anyone wants to make homies with lil ol’ me, I’m super down for that! Shout out as always to sushitrash. for making my blog layout! Thanks for reading, have a great day!
xo, M ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ