Every year, sometime after the monsoon, Hyderabad's fruit carts fill up with lumpy green globes that look more like armour than dessert. Crack one open and you'll understand why people wait for sitaphal season all year.
What is sitaphal?
Sitaphal is the Indian name for custard apple, also called sugar apple or sharifa. Inside the knobbly green skin are creamy white segments with a flavour somewhere between pear, vanilla and caramel, wrapped around shiny black seeds. The texture is soft and slightly grainy, and the name "custard apple" is not an exaggeration.
A short, sweet season
Sitaphal is a post-monsoon fruit. In the Deccan it usually shows up around August and stays until about November, depending on the rains. For a few months it's everywhere. Then it vanishes.
The best sitaphal desserts only exist for a few months a year, because the fruit only does.
Why sitaphal is a labour of love
Anyone who has eaten a sitaphal knows the process: split it, pull apart the segments and work your way around dozens of seeds. Turning that into a dessert means doing it by hand, fruit after fruit, to get clean pulp without crushing the bitter seeds. It's slow work, which is exactly why so many "sitaphal flavoured" products don't use much sitaphal at all.
Why it works so well frozen
Sitaphal is naturally creamy and sweet, so it needs very little help. Blended with milk and frozen on a stick, it keeps its custardy texture and fragrance. A good sitaphal pop tastes exactly like the fruit, seeds removed.
One of our customers put it better than we could: our sitaphal pop is made from fresh pulp taken out of the fruit, and it tastes exactly like the fruit, not like a popsicle.
How we make our Sitaphal pop
Our Sitaphal pop follows the same rule as everything we make: just real ingredients. Fresh sitaphal pulp and milk. No flavouring, no colour and no preservatives, which means it's only on the menu while the fruit is in season.
Sitaphal ice cream vs a sitaphal pop
Hyderabad has a long love affair with sitaphal ice cream, and many people only discovered the fruit through a scoop at their favourite parlour. Our pop is the same idea on a stick: real sitaphal pulp and milk, frozen rather than churned. Many of our regulars say it tastes even more like the fruit, because nothing gets in the way of it.
Sitaphal is seasonal. Follow us on Instagram for the first drop of the season, or explore the rest of our creamy pops.
See the creamy menuMore seasonal favourites
If you love sitaphal, you'll probably like our other fruit-first flavours: Kala Jamun in the monsoon, Alphonso Mango in summer and Jackfruit when it's ripe. And if you're in Hyderabad, here's where to find natural popsicles in the city.