Sheer yakh is Afghanistan’s traditional ice cream: dense, slightly chewy and fragrant with cardamom, often with rosewater too, and topped with crushed pistachios or almonds. The name joins the words for milk and ice and is usually translated as “cold milk”. For generations it has been a street treat and a summer pleasure, and today Afghan cafés and home cooks make it around the world.
Churned by hand
The classic method needs no machine. A sweetened milk base is poured into a metal drum that sits inside a larger vessel packed with ice and salt. The maker keeps twisting the drum and scraping the freezing mixture from its cold walls; as one London maker puts it, the more it is whisked, the creamier it becomes. Some accounts trace this kind of hand-churned ice back to ancient Persia, around 500 BCE.
Ice-cream shops and summers
In Afghan cities, sheer yakh was above all a hot-weather delight. Durkhanai Ayubi remembers ice-cream shops known as sheer yakh froshi, decorated with colourful tiles, where students stopped after school. Afghan cafés in Sydney and London keep the hand-churned tradition alive, while home cooks often use the simple no-churn method below, based on Ayubi’s rose and pistachio recipe.
Ingredients
- 500 ml cold heavy (whipping) cream
- 250 ml sweetened condensed milk
- ½ tsp crushed cardamom seeds
- 1½ tsp rosewater
- 35 g (¼ cup) crushed pistachios
- Slivered pistachios and dried rose petals, to serve
A home-style way to make it
- Whip the cream and condensed milk together in a food processor or with a mixer for 3–4 minutes, until stiff peaks form.
- Transfer to a clean bowl and gently fold in the cardamom, rosewater and crushed pistachios.
- Spoon into an airtight container and press plastic wrap directly onto the surface to stop ice crystals forming.
- Freeze for at least 10 hours, or overnight.
- Serve in scoops, topped with slivered pistachios and rose petals.
