Calories in Shrikhand

Shrikhand is curd hung until thick and beaten with sugar. The recipe behind this figure hangs 1102 g of curd, sweetens it with 8.5 tablespoons of powdered sugar and divides it into 4 portions. The source does not define the bowl, so one serving here simply means one of those 4 portions: the yield of 276 g of curd and 6 1/2 teaspoons of sugar. That is a large helping. Shrikhand is more often eaten as a few spoonfuls beside puri or from a small tub, and those amounts are well under this one. Among the 20 sweets in the set this portion ranks 16th from the lightest.

Carbohydrate supplies 58% of the energy, fat 23% and protein 19%. No other sweet in the set gets as much of its energy from protein, and the 16.1 g in a portion is the highest protein figure of the 20. That is the curd at work. The carbohydrate is nearly all sugar: 48.2 g of the 48.8 g is counted as sugars, from the powdered sugar and from the curd itself. Shrikhand is therefore both the most protein-rich sweet here and one of the most sugary, and the two facts have to be held together.

The full portion is about 15% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 20% of a woman's, and two come to 654 kcal. In a Gujarati or Maharashtrian meal shrikhand is eaten with puri, which is fried, so the pairing is heavy even when the shrikhand itself is modest. A few spoonfuls give the taste; half a portion, about 164 kcal, is already a proper dessert. Its protein is real, but plain curd gives protein without the added sugar, so shrikhand is better thought of as a sweet than as a way to eat curd.

Sugar is the figure that matters: 48.2 g of sugars in the full portion, the highest of any sweet in this set, against 8.8 g of fat. Some of that sugar is the curd's own and the rest is the powdered sugar beaten in. Because shrikhand is made from curd it is often assumed to be light, and it is not. People with diabetes should take their doctor's or dietitian's advice before including it, and should measure the portion in spoonfuls.