Simple, practical, and full of everyday flavour, Malai Kulfi (With Saffron & Pistachios) is a vegetarian Indian desserts made with simple everyday ingredients in about 40 minutes. The recipe lays out the ingredients and each cooking step clearly, so you can adjust seasoning, texture, and serving size for your own kitchen.

Recipe Snapshot

  • Prep time: 5 minutes
  • Cook time: 35 minutes
  • Total time: 40 minutes
  • Yield: 4
  • Category: Desserts
  • Cuisine: Indian

Ingredients

  • 1 litre/about 4 cups milk (– full-fat or whole milk)
  • ⅓ cup/70 grams sugar
  • ¼ teaspoon cardamon powder (or 4 green cardamoms (choti elaichi), crushed to powder in mortar-pestle)
  • 1 pinch saffron strands ((kesar))
  • 10 or 2 tablespoons almonds (- chopped)
  • 12-14 or 2 to 3 tablespoons pistachios (- chopped)
  • 10 or 2 tablespoons cashews (- chopped)
  • ½ cup whipping cream (- 30% to 35% fat or low-fat cream (20 to 25% fat))
  • 2 teaspoons rose water (or kewra water)
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons pistachios (or almonds - finely chopped, for garnish, optional)

Method

Simmering Milk

  1. Firstly take 1 litre full fat milk in a large and heavy sauce pan or pan or kadai.
  2. On a low flame or low heat, bring the milk to a boil. Do stir when the milk gets heated up, so that it does not burn from the bottom.
  3. Stir once the milk comes to a boil and add the malai (clotted cream) back to the milk.
  4. Continue to cook milk on low flame till it reduces to one-third of its original volume.
  5. Keep on stirring and remove the clotted cream (malai) which forms on top of the milk and add it back to the milk.
  6. Also keep on scraping the dried milk solids from the sides and add them back to the milk.
  7. This way stirring often, reduce the milk to one-third of its original volume.
  8. Do stir and scrape often so that the milk does not get browned or burnt from the bottom as well as the sides.

Making Malai Kulfi

  1. Keep the heat to a low and add sugar.
  2. Stir so that the sugar dissolves.
  3. Next add cardamom powder, saffron strands and the chopped nuts.
  4. Add the whipping cream and mix it very well.
  5. On a low heat or low flame, simply bring the entire mixture to one gentle boil. Then turn off the stove.
  6. Lastly add rose water or kewra water and mix very well.
  7. Cover with a lid and let the mixture cool at room temperature.
  8. Once cooled, pour the malai kulfi mixture into kulfi moulds, popsicle moulds or small earthen pots (matkas) to make Matka Kulfi.
  9. Cover tightly with lids or aluminium foil. Freeze malai kulfi for 7 to 8 hours or overnight.

Serving Suggestions

  1. Before serving malai kulfi, take the kulfi mould and just warm it by moving it between your palms.
  2. With the back of a spoon, slid through the sides. If used a kulhad or matka, then directly have the malai kufli from it.
  3. Place the malai kulfi on a serving plate or tray. Sprinkle some finely chopped pistachios or almonds on top. Addition of finely chopped pistachios or almonds is optional and you can skip this step.
  4. Serve straight away.

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.