Cream Cheese Barfi (Indian)

When I had an Indian cooking phase, every week I'd go on this street to get ingredients for my cooking and I would always stop by this little Indian sweets shop and get some really cheap, really delicious treats.  My boyfriend used to prefer gulab jamun, but now I think he likes barfi as much, if not more than gulab jamun, which is a good thing since barfi takes 10-15 minutes to make and gulab jamun requires you to make homemade paneer, also deep-frying, it's a long process.

So my mister has been requesting barfi for some time now, and we had everything to make some except cream (and we're broke lately).  All I could find in the fridge was cream cheese. I melted the cream cheese with some water and used it instead of cream.  It's as simple as that and it worked fine.  It's a little different from regular barfi though, it tastes a little of cream cheese, it's really thick, slightly more salty and it feels less powdery/melty.  It's kind of a similar dessert to barfi, but different.

So here I share with you the regular nut barfi basic recipe I always use, and I included the cream cheese variation if you're curious or you have no cream too!  I tried being more precise than the book in my instructions.  The said book is Cuisine Indienne by Manju Malhi.

(makes 9 pieces, or enough for 3-4 persons)

-50g nuts: pistachios, cashews and/or almonds are the most common nuts used in Indian cooking, but you can use whatever you want, mix nuts, I used pecan on the pictures

-1tbsp unsalted butter

-50g powdered sugar

-100mL water + 50g cream cheese, melted and combined together in a double boiler (I use a bowl that fits over a pot of boiling water)

-125g powdered milk

-the seeds of 5 cardamom pods, crushed 

-other flavours? *

Roast your nuts in a pan on low/medium then coarsely crush them in mortar or chop them with a sharp knife.

Prepare a small container (one that shouldn't hold more than 2 cups).  I used a 9x9cm (3.5x3.5 inches) small plastic container.  Line it nicely with cling film.

Warm up a non-stick pan (medium/small if you have), get a silicon spatula and get ready for a workout!  Melt the butter first, then add the powdered sugar and mix for 3 minutes, incorporating the butter to the sugar by smudging them together against the bottom of the pan.  Add the cream or the cream cheese solution, and mix for 3 minutes.  Add the powdered milk and mix thoroughly and constantly for about 3 minutes again, then add the cardamom and nuts.  Mix well for a minute or two, then transfer to your prepared container.  Pack the mixture and flatten the top nicely with the wet back of a spoon.  Cover with cling film, flatten further with your fingers through the film if you want, and let the fudge rest for a couple hours to firm it up before cutting in small pieces.

*Other Indian dessert flavours you could use include rose water and saffron strands (from Iran or Spain, the good kind).  If you skip the cardamom, you could make a non-Indian barfi and use vanilla extract or seeds, orange blossom water, substitute some nuts by desiccated coconut... Experiment!