Home-made Shrikhand

Shrikhand is a renowned dessert from Maharashtra.  This is a Marathi person's answer to Gelato.  We followed a recipe from Salil's dad and it worked perfectly for us.  We cant take the credit for this one though.  Being a true scientist, he gave us the "formula" and not a recipe! We had 9 people coming over for lunch and so the scale is much more than we normally have on the blog.  But the Shrikhand will keep well in the fridge for a at least a couple of weeks and will make you come back for more.  Shrikhand can off course be a stand alone dessert  at the end of a meal.  But we like to make shrikhand-puri. 

Puri is a fried bread and I cant believe that wikipedia actually has an entry to describe puri.  They have done a much better job of describing it that I would ever do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puri_(food)
But, I am surprised to see that shrikhand is not mentioned in the accompaniments :(. 

The thing is actually quite easy to make, especially in the US where the yoghurt and sour cream is easily available.  My mom starts from fresh milk, makes her own youghurt/curd.

50 oz plain youghurt ( extremely important to use full fat, cream on top kind) - this is not the place to save some calories.  If you are going through the trouble of making it, might as well enjoy it to the fullest.

50 oz sour cream (again full fat - gives a nice mildly sour punch)

2 cups raw/refined sugar (this makes relatively mildly sweet - most Indians will complian  that its not sweet enough, but I study diabetes for a living!)

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground cardomom

1 cup nuts (we used crushed toasted hazelnuts which are not to be found in India.  More common will be pistachio, almonds or cashews or all three)

saffron ( how much saffron is difficult to tell.  If you have the real good one - which may not essentially be the most expensive one, as we found out the hard way - little will go a long way!  Its best to soak it in a TBS or two of warm milk, let it seep through the milk for about half an hour and then add the golden yellow milk to the shrikhand.  We are not looking for much color, but just the fragrance of saffron)

Muslin/ cheese cloth - a clean 100% cotton scarf will work as long as you are okay with it smelling like a baby/ old milk for a long time even after many washes!!

Hang the youghurt and sour cream in the cheese cloth and let it hang overnight, to get rid of the excess moisture.  We did it in two batches given the amount we had.  Once the mixture is hung, get it out in a bowl, add sugar, saffron, cardomom and nuts.  Chill it in the fridge for 6-8 hourse allowing for all the flavors to come together.  

I promised you, its easy to make.