Hi Everyone!!! Back in December 2022, I came across a video on YouTube about ‘Puttu Ice Cream’ served at Cream Story, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. As a puttu and ice cream lover, I was determined to try it out during our then upcoming trip to my hometown, Chennai and this post is gonna be about that. Anybody fond of puttu, banana and freshly grated coconut with loads of sugar? Let me know in the comments!
For those unaware about the dish ‘Puttu’- it’s a famous steamed dish made in many regions of South India and in Sri Lanka too. It is interesting to note that puttu has been mentioned in ‘Thiruppugazh’ (often spelled as ‘Tiruppukal’), a 15th century literary work in Tamil language, authored by Arunagirinathar. This steamed delicacy is generally prepared using rice or millets in a powdered form using a puttu kuzhal, a cylindrical vessel, due to which it turns out in a cylindrical shape as well. Puttu is often paired with a spiced chickpea curry (kondaikadalai curry) or with banana, grated coconut and sugar as I mentioned in the start of this write-up (which is my all time favourite combo😉).
My mom and I weren’t able to find a picture of the puttu kuzhal from our collection. So, I quickly clicked a pic of my grandmother’s puttu kuzhal always available at home 😄.
The steel stick on the left is used to push the puttu out of the vessel once steamed...
The brown coloured finger millet flour and the white coloured rice flour are layered accordingly in the puttu kuzhal, prior to getting steamed. The final product Puttu comes out like this, seen below. This technique has been used in making puttu ice cream too…
Both of my besties and I could eat puttu and banana along with grated coconut and sugar at any time of the day. As puttu happens to be something that the three of us share a liking for, I informed them about puttu ice cream. I presumed they’d sound as equally excited as me. But guess what- I got mixed reactions. After some deep thinking, they finally seemed interested in trying it out which delighted the ice cream lover in me!😁 Nevertheless, with the same enthusiasm, I went up to my mom and told her we gotta try puttu ice cream during our Chennai visit. After reaching Chennai during my winter break in December last year, I kept nagging my parents on when we could drop in at Cream Story and finally check out this cool treat.
My parents and I, along with my uncle’s family visited Cream Story’s Ekkatuthangal branch which took around 25mins to reach from my grandparents’ house. The dessert shop is right above a juice bar on Parthasarathy Kovil 2nd Street and is right opposite Adyar Anandha Bhavan, a well known vegetarian restaurant.
This branch of Cream story is quite compact but has a lot of sweet treats to offer like waffles, my favourite dessert from the middle east- the kunafa (which one do you guys like more- baklava or kunafa?!), shakes, pancakes etc.
Seating area @Cream Story…
There had been a birthday celebration going on when we entered the shop so I eventually got a chance to click this pic in the end…
Grab a sweet treat and enjoy it on a swing, overlooking the road with a view of cars going by!😊
Puttu ice cream comes with six flavours selected by the customer. Hence, it is customised in a way, as we could opt for 6 flavours of our choice and not have to stick with six standard flavours as selected by the shop. This was something I liked!
Coming to the highlight of this post- Puttu Ice Cream!!
We ordered two Puttu Ice Creams- one for my parents and myself and the other for my uncle’s family. The ice cream flavours I picked were tender coconut, mango, jackfruit, vanilla, cookies and cream and chocolate. Though I’m not sure of all the flavours my uncle chose, I did see him choosing guava and black currant😆.
A scoop of each selected flavour of ice cream goes down into the puttu kuzhal and the vessel is closed once filled to the tip. After the different flavours of ice cream settle inside the kuzhal, it’s pushed out using a stick on the back of the vessel onto a plate with confectionaries and voila! It’s almost ready!! The final step is to deck up the puttu ice cream with loads more sprinkles, Gems (which I call the M&Ms of India 😁), some tutti frutti, raisins, cornflakes and drizzle over some chocolate sauce as well.
This is how my uncle’s Puttu Ice Cream was made…
Ready to be savoured!!!
This was how my Puttu Ice Cream turned out to be…
After relishing the puttu ice cream, we got one packed for my grandparents and returned back home.
Ironically, while writing this post I’m down with a pretty bad cold and a blocked nose. So, no ice cream for a while for me, which indeed is a huge disappointment since I’ve been struggling with this for more than 3 weeks now🙄😆.
Have you ever tried puttu ice cream? Would you like to try it once?!! Let me know in the comments section below…
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Looks delicious! Hope you get well soon!
Thank you!!