Ferni AKA Kheer is a creamy- or custard-textured, sweet sort of pastry that is popular in the middle-east, Asia minor, and the Indian subcontinent. As such, you'll find myriad varieties of it with different ingredients and recipes. The core ingredients of ferni are water, milk, sugar, and a starchy cereal or flour such as rice, rice flour, corn flour, wheat flour, etc. Some recipes make use of cornstarch alone. This one here is my ideal choice for filling doughnuts but it can also consumed as a perfect breakfast meal. If you like, you can put jam or honey on top of it if you want to serve it as breakfast or just serve it as it is.
- 189g confectionery flour, sifted
- 0.875 tsp (2.6g) cinnamon
- 1.490kg milk
- 147g water
- 94g sugar
- 74g rose water
- 49g butter
- 0.125 tsp (0.3g) saffron
- 49g crushed nuts (almond, pistachio, etc) for dressing the top (optional)
2.030kg for 5 servings
Pour the water and the milk in a pan. Mix the flour and cinnamon well and then pour it into a sift and hold it on top of the pan with one hand and hold a wooden spoon in the other. Bit by bit sprinkle the flour by slight movement of the sift while continuously stirring the liquid to prevent forming of flour clots. After all the flour is uniformly mixed into the liquid, let it rest for a minute so that, if there are clots, they will float on the surface and you can mix them in by pressing them against the pan wall using the wooden spoon. Then place the pan on the stove and turn it on to medium heat. Keep stirring almost vigorously so the flour doesn't deposit on the bottom and the milk doesn't form a cooked layer on the bottom. Adjust the heat so that it will be enough to evaporate the water but not so much as to boil it. After a few minutes of stirring on the heat you should start to see a mild vapour rising. Mix the sugar in as soon as the liquid is hot enough. Continue stirring... After the texture of the liquid begins to change, add the rosewater, saffron, and butter into the mix. Keep stirring on the heat until the mixture becomes thicker, like an almost runny paste. When the desired thickness and texture is achieved, remove from heat and continue stirring a while longer to prevent forming of the bottom layer. The ferni is ready. Pour the ferni into soup plates or dessert bowls and let them cool down in the kitchen. Then dress the top with crushed nuts and optionally more cinnamon.
If you're using the ferni for doughnut filling, you won't need to pour it into soup plates. Just let it cool down and then store it in the fridge to be used later for filling.