If you love ice cream as much as trying out new foods, then welcome! We will show you how to make a Mango Malai Kulfi, a popular Indian ice cream. But contrary to the traditional recipe, which uses animal fats and refined sugars, our kulfi is both vegan and sugar-free.
But first, what is malai? And what is kulfi?
Kulfi is a traditional frozen dairy dessert similar to ice cream, but denser and creamier. The consistency of kulfi is similar to custard ice cream.
Malai is an Indian-style type of clotted cream, and it's used both in sweet and savoury recipes, like kofta dumplings and kulfi.
Following the tradition of Indian ice cream, we sprinkled our kulfi with pistachios, for extra crunch and flavour. If you are curious, you can keep reading to learn how we have prepared this dessert or skip straight to the steps below.
To make vegan malai, we replaced clotted cream and condensed milk with the fatty part of coconut milk. Plus, we have used blended cashew nuts, to add even more creaminess without introducing excessive saturated fats.
Coconut cream has quite a few saturates. But scientific research tells us that the saturated fats from coconut are not as bad as those from animal products, and even have some beneficial effects [1](link).
Finally, our kulfi is 100% sugar-free. Instead of sugar, we used very ripe mangoes. That's it! We love cooking without using refined sugars. If you are into sugar-free ice creams, check out our sugar-free chocolate chip ice cream recipe too!
So now for the big showdown: nutritional profile. Compared to the classic mango kulfi, our version has almost half of the fats and saturated fats, which all come from plant-based sources. Our kulfi also has only 13% of your RDI for sugars and only 220 calories per popsicle.
Plus, our recipe is even quicker than the traditional one, as it requires no cooking of the ingredients: it only takes 10 minutes of preparation. Follow our steps below and enjoy these vegan mango lollies!