Give your regular kheer (rice pudding) a makeover with this Butterscotch kheer! Topped with crunchy praline and drizzled with butterscotch sauce, you will love with jazzed up version of kheer.

Recipe Snapshot

  • Prep time: 10 minutes
  • Cook time: 45 minutes
  • Total time: 55 minutes
  • Yield: 7
  • Category: Dessert
  • Cuisine: Indian

Ingredients

Kheer

  • 1/3 cup basmati rice (65 grams, soaked in water for 15 to 20 minutes)
  • 4 cups whole milk (1 liter)
  • 3-4 tablespoons granulated white sugar (to taste, 38-50 grams)
  • 1/2-3/4 teaspoon butterscotch essence (for more butterscotch flavor, add 3/4 teaspoon)

Praline

  • 1/2 cup granulated white sugar (100 grams)
  • 1/4 cup cashews (45 grams)

Butterscotch Sauce

  • 4 tablespoons butter (unsalted)
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar (100 grams)
  • 1/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method

Make the kheer

  1. Before you start, soak the basmati rice in water for 15 to 20 minutes. Then drain the water using a colander and set it aside.
  2. To a heavy bottom pan on medium-high heat, add whole milk. Let the milk warm up for 5 minutes.
  3. Then add the soaked and drained rice to the pan and stir well. Let it come to a boil on medium-high heat, this takes around 10 to 12 minutes. Stir often.
  4. Once it comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low. Keep cooking and stirring often. After you have been cooking it for 15 minutes on medium-low heat, add the sugar and stir. Also add the butterscotch essence.
  5. Keep cooking and stirring often until the kheer thickens quite a bit. In total, I cooked the kheer for 25 to 26 minutes on medium-low heat after the milk came to a boil. Time may vary depending on the thickness of the pot and intensity of heat. You are looking for thickened consistency here. At this point kheer is done, remove pot from heat and now we will make the praline. The kheer will continue to thicken as it cools down.

Make the Praline

  1. Chop the cashews before you start making the praline. Add sugar to a wide pan on medium-low heat. Don’t stir it, at first the sugar will get clumpy.
  2. But eventually it will melt completely and become smooth. As soon as sugar melts and caramelizes (light golden in color), add the cashews to it. Stir to combine. Be very careful here, the caramelized sugar is very hot. Also sugar can burn very quickly once it has melted so as soon as it caramelizes, stir in the cashews and remove from heat.
  3. Transfer the mixture onto a parchment paper and let it cool down. Once it has cooled down, break it down into medium size chunks/pieces using a knife. Now let's make the butterscotch sauce.

Make the butterscotch sauce

  1. To make the butterscotch sauce, in a pan add together butter, brown sugar, heavy cream and salt on medium heat. Mix until everything is well combined.
  2. Let it come to a boil and then simmer 4 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat, add vanilla and mix.

Assemble and Serve

  1. To assemble the butterscotch kheer, to a serving bowl or jar (I have used 4 oz glasses), add the kheer (I like the kheer to be chilled). Then top with the praline chunks. You can either drizzle the sauce on top or to make it look fancy, add the sauce to these cupcake pipettes (I got these from amazon) and place on the side of the bowl and then serve.

Kiyaan Singh’s Kitchen Note

Keep this recipe as a working base: cook once as written, then adjust spice, texture, and serving style for your own table.