Full of butter chicken and goat biryani at the Manhattan restaurant Adda recently, I thought dessert was out of the question. Until, that is, I was offered a mini popsicle made of kulfi, the Indian frozen confection—a finish so playfully refreshing, I actually wanted more.
In “Malai: Frozen Desserts Inspired by South Asian Flavors,” the new cookbook from the Malai East Coast ice cream shops, I found three recipes that couldn’t be easier. Really. No ice cream machine
Full of butter chicken and goat biryani at the Manhattan restaurant Adda recently, I thought dessert was out of the question. Until, that is, I was offered a mini popsicle made of kulfi, the Indian frozen confection—a finish so playfully refreshing, I actually wanted more.
In “Malai: Frozen Desserts Inspired by South Asian Flavors,” the new cookbook from the Malai East Coast ice cream shops, I found three recipes that couldn’t be easier. Really. No ice cream machine required.
To make kulfi, traditionally milk is cooked down slowly to thicken, combined with sugar as well as optional flavorings—cardamom is a classic—and frozen in a clay pot. When Malai founder Pooja Bavishi’s mother wanted to make kulfi in the U.S., her Indian community in Pennsylvania advised her. “There are these immigrant shortcuts when people first come over here,” Bavishi said. Canned condensed milk and evaporated milk plus heavy cream provided the thick, creamy kulfi consistency minus the painstaking milk-cooking step.
Bavishi’s mom froze her kulfi in popsicle molds, like they do at Adda and Malai—just two of the outlets offering kulfi pops right now. You can buy them at Costcos around the American Southwest, courtesy of Texan company Kaurina’s Kulfi, or in Portland, Ore., at a shop named Kulfi. Malai’s stores in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., have them—and if you don’t happen to be in those cities, Malai ships nationally via Goldbelly. Eight pops cost $80, including overnight shipping.
Kulfi pops are a low lift to make and, thanks to those canned grocery-store products, relatively inexpensive: around $13 for a batch of 8 to 10, plus the cost of flavorings (which you may already have in your spice rack). It can be as simple as adding a little cardamom to the base, or if you’re feeling more flush, a pinch of saffron. One recipe in “Malai” calls for pistachio butter and soan papdi, a flaky chickpea confection you can buy at any Indian market—both investments worth making, I assure you.
Silicone popsicle molds are ideal, but plastic will do the trick, as will paper cups (just poke in a popsicle stick). Or, line a loaf pan with parchment, freeze the kulfi in there and serve it sliced into slabs. Cookbook author Molly Yeh recently posted on Instagram the result of combining all three kulfi-pop recipes from the “Malai” book in a tri-color pop. And if you’d like a magic-shell upgrade, Bavishi offers a recipe for that too.
So, make or buy? I’ll be doing both, at least until this heat breaks.
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