Kala Jamun is an Indian sweet made with milk solids. These fried balls are dipped in a sugar syrup flavored with cardamom, rose water and saffron! They are the perfect festive treat.
1/2 cup+ 1 teaspoonchena125 grams, mashed or use grated paneer
1/2cupall purpose flour64 grams, maida
pinchbaking soda
1/4teaspooncardamom powder
2tablespoonsfinely chopped cashewsoptional, only if stuffing the jamuns
Sugar syrup
3cupssugar600 grams
4cupswater32 oz
4teaspoonsrose water20 ml
2teaspoonskewra water10 ml
10wholegreen cardamomscrushed
generous pinchsaffron strands
2teaspoonslemon juice10 ml
oil + ghee, for frying (I used a mix of both)
Instructions
To a large plate, add mawa (this should be soft mawa) and then mash it nicely using your hands for 1-2 minutes making it completely smooth.
To same plate now add, chena (or if you don't want to make fresh chena, use grated paneer), flour, baking soda and cardamom powder.Mix everything together using your hands.
And form a smooth dough. No milk was needed here and moisture from chena and mawa was enough to bring everything together, in case the mawa you are using is dry or you are using paneer and it's dry you can add milk to bring it all together.
This is optional but if you want to stuff the jamuns, take 1 tablespoon from this dough and add 2 tablespoons crushed nuts (cashews) and food color to it and mix. You can also add saffron strands soaked in 1/2 teaspoon water here.Now take a small ball, around 20 grams from the dough and flatten it and then stuff it if you want by taking a little amount from that prepared stuffing dough.
Seal the dough and roll between your palm to form a smooth round ball. Make all jamuns similarly. Keep them covered at all times so that they don't dry out.
Start working on the sugar syrup now. I make a huge amount of syrup since I like extra syrup with these jamuns, you can easily half the amount of this syrup if you like.To make the syrup, add sugar, water, rose water, kewra water, crushed cardamom and saffron to a pan on medium heat.Let the sugar dissolve and mixture come to boil. As soon as it comes to boil, add the lemon juice and stir. Lemon juice helps prevent crystallization of the sugar syrup.
Let the syrup simmer on medium heat for around 6 minutes. It should become sticky by then but will have no thread consistency. That's the right stage to remove pan from heat. Set this aside now.
Heat oil with some ghee in a kadai to fry the jamuns on low-medium heat. You can use only ghee or only oil too, I like using a combination of both.Add the prepared jamuns to lukewarm oil. Once jamuns are in the oil, keep moving the oil around them with a spatula without touching the jamuns so that the bottom doesn't get brown.
After around 6-7 minutes, they will start floating in oil, at this point turn heat to medium from low-medium.They will first turn golden brown in color.
Fry until they turn black, this will take around 14 to 15 minutes in total. Do not burn them. Remove them from oil using a spatula.
Drop fried hot jamuns in the prepared syrup. Syrup should be warm when you add jamuns to it (and jamuns should be dropped immediately after frying them). Fry all of them similarly and let them soak in the sugar syrup for at least 4 hours.Enjoy warm!
Notes
Please read the important tips mentioned in the last, that will help while making this recipe.
The amount of sugar syrup can easily be halved. I like extra sugar syrup with my kala jamuns hence make a large amount.
Stuffing the jamuns is optional, you can skip the step.