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!
