By Saima Biva

For those with a sweet tooth, creamy, soft and flavourful fruit custard is an ideal dessert. Anyone can make this simple recipe with ingredients already at home, and after a day of intense heat it will give your afternoon a different touch. Here is how to make silky fruit custard with just a few ordinary ingredients.

• Milk: 1 kg
• Powdered milk: 1 cup
• Sugar: half a cup
• Green cardamom: 3
• Cinnamon: 1 small stick
• Bay leaf: 1
• Custard powder: 4 spoons
• Fruit of your choice (apple, grapes, banana, pomegranate and so on)
• Ice cream: flavour of your choice

First set aside half a cup of cold milk. Boil the rest of the milk until it reduces to a little over half a kilo. Add the powdered milk, sugar to taste, cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaf to the boiled milk. When the milk thickens a little, remove the cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaf.

As the custard will be served with ice cream, you can cut down the sugar a little to keep the taste balanced. Mix 4 spoons of custard powder into the cold milk set aside, pour it into the hot milk on the stove and stir without stopping. When the milk thickens to a sticky, payesh-like consistency, take it off the heat, let it cool and put it in the fridge. After 30 minutes in the fridge the custard will set.

Cut your chosen fruit into cubes of the same size and add them to the custard, and do not forget the ice cream. You can also make this dessert with just one fruit. Enjoy the fruit custard chilled.

If you want to cut the fruit in advance, soak it in cold water from the fridge with a little salt so that it does not turn dark.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.