When the heat is on and you’re craving something sweet, nothing satisfies more than a serving (or more :)) of an ice cold frozen dessert. And while there are all kinds of ice creams and sorbets around, for me, what hits the spot always is sweet, creamy, cardamom scented kulfi. Kulfi is an Indian ice cream, made traditionally by reducing milk to a thick liquid and adding khoya (dried evaporated milk solids) along with cardamom, saffron, sugar, dried fruit and nuts. It’s creamy milky heaven in every bite!

As much as I like to eat kulfi, I don’t enjoy the process of making it from scratch. It’s very time consuming and the last thing I want to do in the hot sweltering summers is to be slaving over the stove. A friend of mine had passed this no cook kulfi recipe to me years ago and I have been making it and sharing it with friends for a long time.

The great thing about this recipe is that the ingredients do all the work for you. The evaporated and condensed milk take away the work of cooking and reducing the milk. The cool whip gives a nice creamy texture. It was a popular recipe on the blog till Cool Whip went out of stock in Singapore and I had friends calling me to ask what can be a good substitute.

With some research and trials, I was able to figure out that whipped cream could be used as a substitute for cool whip. This was also what I used in this recipe for no-cook coffee ice cream . There are a couple of ways to include cream into your kulfi.

One of them is to just mix the cream, evaporated and condensed milks and add the preferred flavorings. My preferred way of doing it is to whip the cream with condensed milk creating a stable whipping cream then gradually add the evaporated milk and then add the flavorings. I love the lighter texture that comes about as a result of whipping the cream first. This leads to no separation of the ingredients while freezing and the kulfi comes out as one homogeneous block - which the cool whip was able to achieve. In my home, I am the worst critic of my own food so I see and point out things that no one else does :) I also prefer to use nonfat condensed milk in this recipe as there is already a lot of whipping cream in it. The original recipe also used nonfat cool whip - so this helps to balance out the overall fat in the recipe a bit.

If you also want to try out a no-cook ice cream, you can try the coffee ice cream below. Switch around the flavours and toppings of your choice - make cookies and cream flavour with Oreo cookies or brownie fudge ice cream with brownie pieces and chocolate swirls or just plain and simple chocolate and salted caramel chips!