Making Khoya 

• Pour  full cream milk into heavy bottom pan and reduce it slowly. Frequent stirring is required else milk will burn from bottom. This may take 40 to 45 mins.
• At the end the moisture will evaporate and milk will reach consistency of thicker pudding.
• You can often get khoya at India sweet mart stores, they call it unsweetened mava which is ready to use.

Making the Dough

With the heel of your palm or the base of a flat metal bowl, mash the khoya, so that no grains remain.

Mix in the flour and baking soda and knead into firm dough. You can use a food processor too. The dough should be firm but pliable and should not feel dry. If it does feel dry, wet your hands and work the dough again.

Shape the dough into marble-sized balls (jamuns) that are smooth and creaseless. The shape can be round or oblong.

Heat ghee in a kadahi (medium sized saucepan) till a piece of dough tossed in comes up at once. Lower heat and fry a cube of bread till light brown (this lowers the temperature of the ghee). Lift out bread and add as many jamuns as will fit in, without one touching the other. Keeping the heat low, fry these till a golden brown all over.

Drain the jamuns out of the ghee, and fry the next lot, increasing the heat for a few seconds and then lowering it again before adding the jamuns. Keep gulab jamuns aside till the syrup is ready.

Syrup

Mix the sugar and water and place over low heat, stirring till the sugar dissolves. Make sure it does not boil. Increase the heat once the sugar dissolves, and then bring mixture to a boil. Add the milk and water mixture and continue boiling over high flame, without stirring.

Skim off any scum that collects on the sides of the pan.

Cook till syrup thickens a bit. A finger dipped in slightly cold syrup should form a coating on it for a few seconds. Take syrup off stove and cool for a minimum of half an hour. Strain through a fine nylon sieve or muslin cloth.

Add cardamom and bring syrup to a boil again.

Cool syrup and add rose essence or rose water.

Add the fried gulab jamuns to it and put off the heat.

Let jamuns soak for at least half an hour before serving.

Tip:

Cover syrup and gulab jamun dish with saran wrap/cheese cloth and keep the gulab jamuns soaked in syrup overnight. This process makes them softer and juicy. Warm for 30 seconds in microwave before serving. (Editors Comment: I personally like eating them cold and with ice cream)

 

Enjoy and Happy Diwali