Kesar Badam Pista Kulfi: Indian Frozen Milk Dessert
- Total Time: 6 hours 15 mins
- Yield: 6 kulfi
Description
This frozen dairy popsicle is flavored with mawa burfi candies, pistachios and saffron.
Ingredients
- 2 cups (480 ml) milk
- 2 cups (480 ml) any milk burfi chunks/ mawa
- 1/2 cup (120 ml) sugar
- few strands of kesar/saffron
- Chopped almonds and pistachios
- Cardamom powder
Instructions
- In wide pan, boil milk.
- Once it starts boiling, add the burfis.
- Stir continuously for 15 mins. Now add sugar.
- Continue stirring. Add cardamom, kesar and chopped nuts.
- Boil the milk till it becomes thick in consistency. This make take around one hour on medium flame gas.
- Cool it and transfer to kulfi molds or popsicle molds. Freeze for 6 hours.
- Before removing the kulfi from the mold, hold the mold under flowing water for 5 mins. It will enable you to smoothly remove the kulfi.
- Prep Time: 6 hours
- Cook Time: 15 mins
- Category: Dessert
- Cuisine: Indian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 kulfi
- Calories: 220
An hour of standing at the stove stirring a pan of milk sounds like a lot, and it is, but it is also really the only thing standing between you and a delicious bowl of kulfi, which is India's frozen milk dessert and one of the great ones.
Kulfi is denser than ice cream and much slower to melt, because none of it is churned and no air gets whipped in. It's very easy to succeed with, if you have the patience for it. Just pour milk into a wide pan and cook down over an hour until it is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, sweet and heavy and pale gold from saffron. Then freeze it hard in little molds, six hours at least, and it comes out as a solid block of concentrated milk on a stick.
This version doubles down. Two cups of milk burfi go into the boiling milk and dissolve into it. Burfi is an Indian sweet made by cooking milk down to solids and setting it with sugar, so putting burfi into milk that is already reducing is a bit like adding fudge to custard. Yeah, you can see how this is absolutely delicious, can't you!?
One thing that trips people up at the end. Do not force a kulfi out of its mold because it easily cracks straight across. Hold the mold under running water for a full five minutes first and it slides out on its own. Worth the wait when you have already given the thing hours of your life.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is mawa burfi and can I substitute something else?
Mawa burfi (milk burfi) is an Indian confection made from reduced milk solids — adding 2 cups of chunks to the boiling milk essentially doubles down on the dairy richness and gives the kulfi its dense, creamy texture. If unavailable, khoya (dried whole milk) is the closest substitute; ricotta or condensed milk can approximate the richness but will change the flavour.
How do I remove the kulfi cleanly from the molds?
Hold the mold under flowing water for 5 minutes before unmolding — this gently warms the outside and allows the kulfi to slide out smoothly. After freezing for the full 6 hours, don’t try to force the mold or the kulfi may crack.
