Give your regular kheer a makeover with this Butterscotch Kheer. Thick rice kheer flavored with butterscotch essence, topped with crunchy praline and butterscotch sauce, this makes the perfect dessert for the festive season.

Rice Kheer has to be the most common dessert that’s made in every Indian household, right along side sooji halwa. I grew up eating kheer on a regular basis. Mom made it for all festivities and also when we felt like having something sweet. Kheer was always the answer to those sweet cravings back then.

But she always made the basic rice kheer. For the festive season this year, I thought of giving mom’s usual kheer a makeover and make this Butterscotch Kheer.

This kheer is inspired by my favorite Butterscotch Ice cream. It has the same flavors but in the form of a kheer. I went a little bit over the top with the sauce and decorating with these cute cupcake pipettes and they turned out so cute!

Three Parts To The Recipe

So, this butterscotch kheer recipe has 3 parts to it.

• the kheer (rice pudding)
• the praline (sugar & nuts)
• the butterscotch sauce (easy 5 minutes version!)

If you want you can skip the sauce and serve the kheer with praline only. But do not skip the crunchy praline since that’s the part that I associate most with butterscotch flavor.

Ingredients

For the rice kheer: it’s a basic kheer made with rice, whole milk, sugar and flavored with Indian butterscotch essence. The most important ingredient here is the Indian butterscotch essence since that’s what will give it that unique flavor. Do not substitute with American butterscotch essence.

For the praline: the crunchy praline is my favorite part and made with sugar and cashews. You can use a mix of almonds and cashews as well.

For the butterscotch sauce: this quick 5 minute butterscotch sauce is made with cream, butter, brown sugar. You can’t substitute the brown sugar here since that’s what gives the sauce that deep caramel flavor.

Step by Step Method

1- Before you start, soak the basmati rice in water for 15 to 20 minutes. Then drain the water using a colander and set it aside.

2- To a heavy bottom pan on medium-high heat, add whole milk. Let the milk warm up for 5 minutes.

3- Then add the soaked and drained rice to the pan and stir well.

4- Let it come to a boil on medium-high heat, this takes around 10 to 12 minutes. Stir often.

5- Once it comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low. Keep cooking and stirring often. After you have been cooking it for 15 minutes on medium-low heat, add the sugar and stir.

6- Also add the butterscotch essence.

7- Keep cooking and stirring often until the kheer thickens quite a bit. It will continue to thicken as it cools down.

8- In total, I cooked the kheer for 25 to 26 minutes on medium-low heat after the milk came to a boil. Time may vary depending on the thickness of the pot and intensity of heat. You are cooking for thickened consistency here. At this point kheer is done, remove pot from heat and now we will make the praline.

9- Chop the cashews before you start making the praline. Add sugar to a wide pan on medium-low heat. Don’t stir it, at first the sugar will get clumpy.

10 & 11- But eventually it will melt completely and become smooth. As soon as sugar melts and caramelizes (light golden in color), add the cashews to it. Stir to combine. Be very careful here, the caramelized sugar is very hot. Also sugar can burn very quickly once it’s melted so as soon as it caramelizes, stir in the cashews and remove from heat.

12- Transfer the mixture onto a parchment paper and let it cool down. Once it has cooled down, break it down into medium size chunks/pieces using a knife. Now let’s make the butterscotch sauce.

13- To make the butterscotch sauce, in a pan add together butter, brown sugar, heavy cream and salt on medium heat

14- Mix until everything is well combined.

15- Let it come to a boil and then simmer 4 to 5 minutes.

16- Remove from heat, add vanilla and mix.

Serving

To assemble the butterscotch kheer, to a serving bowl or jar (I have used 4 oz glass jars), add the kheer (I like the kheer to be chilled). Then top with the praline chunks. You can either drizzle the sauce on top or to make it look fancy, add the sauce to these cupcake pipettes (I got these from amazon) and place on the side of the bowl and then serve.

I hope you guys will give this butterscotch kheer recipe a try. It’s easy to make although the 3 parts to it might sound like a lot of work but it’s all easy to put together. The kheer will definitely look fantastic on your party table for the festive season.

Make Ahead Instructions

You can make the kheer, praline and sauce everything in advance but don’t assemble them beforehand. The kheer and the sauce thicken quite a bit in the refrigerator. So you might have to thin out the kheer (add some warm milk and microwave or heat in a pan) and also thin out the sauce (add some cream) before assembling the cups/jars.

Tips & Notes

• You may adjust the sugar to taste. The quantity I have shared works for me but if you want to reduce the sweetness of the base kheer to balance out the sweetness from the praline and sauce, you can reduce it to 1 to 2 tablespoons. It’s up to you.
• You can use skim milk as well, will work fine.
• Do not use American butterscotch essence if you want that Indian flavor of butterscotch in this kheer. You can find Indian butterscotch essence at Indian grocery stores or online. You can however replace it with vanilla essence if you absolutely want to make it but don’t have or can’t find the essence.
• You can skip the sauce and just serve the kheer with praline, it’s quite good that way too.
• You will be left with some butterscotch sauce, you can use it to flavor coffee, milkshakes etc.

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