Home made Indian Ice Cream - Kulfi!

On Sunday night (18th Oct) Vishnu had his 'Deepalulea' dinner (pictures and updates akan datang). So I decided that I'd make an Indian dessert. I wanted to make carrot halva, but it's kinda strange that many people do not like carrots. Then I wanted to make Laddoo, but I didn't want to do deep frying or go buy ghee that I'd never use again after that. So I decided, (as if it wasn't cold enough) that I'd make Badam Kulfi or indian almond ice cream.

Its really easy to make, but it takes like a crazy 8354356 hours for the milk to reduce so I was standing over the stove string for what seemed like an eternity... cos I made 3 portions at one go, so there was a lot of liquid in my pot. So if you want the gratification of eating good hand made ice cream and happen to have an entire afternoon free, here's the recipe :)

This recipe is for one portion and it should be enough for 6-8 people.

What you need
1 liter of milk

1 big slice of bread (crust removed and cut into tiny pieces)

1 teaspoon corn starch

1/4 cup sugar

3 strands of saffron (optional)

60g chopped almonds (dry roasted)

seeds of 5 cardamoms, ground (dry roasted to release the fragrance)

Fresh fruits like mango or strawberries (optional)

Method
1. Dry roast the almonds and cardamom together

2. Take 1/2 a cup of the milk, the chopped bread and the corn starch and whizz it in a blender until it becomes a paste

3. Pour the remaining milk into a non-stick pan and bring it to a simmer, making it it never boils, keep stirring gently until you see that it has reduced to half of the original amount.

4. Next add in the bread mixture and stir until it thickens again.

5. Then add in the sugar, saffron if using and 3/4 of almond-cardamom mixture and keep stirring well until it thickens up and becomes like a cream. It should easily coat the spatula you are stirring with.

6. Pour it into a tray or individual moulds and sprinkle the remaining almond-cardamom over the top of the kulfi. Then cover it with cling film, making sure that the cling film is touching the top of the kulfi so that a skin does not form. Then freeze it for 6 hours.

7. Serve it plain or with with mango and strawberry pieces.

I was actually surprised that people liked it, I really though the cardamom would make it too strange to eat for the non-asians. So my kulfi making days are far from over :)