Sweets

Here's the second love of my life.. after my bf. They are delicious and yummy fried Indian sweets.

The state that I am from in India are famous for its production, as well as export of a variety of sweets. They are usually the types made from cottage cheese, milk, or chhena, a type of moist un-fermented cheese.

I think making these are particularly difficult, because it is quite easy for them to crumble

The left image shows 'Gulab Jamun', or 'Pantua'. Gulab Jamun is similar to a dumpling, made from semolina, unsalted cheese, sugar, flour and eggs among other small ingredients used for flavoring. I tried making it a couple of times, but the consistency is quite difficult to achieve from store bought readymade mixture. Plus because they need to be soaked in sugar syrup, the last thing I would want (and has happened countless times) is for them to break and end end up in a syrupy mess.

The right image is a version of 'gulab jamun', called 'kalo jaamun'. The word 'kalo' means black. They are basically gulaab jamuns, but deep fried in ghee (unclarified butter) thus their outer skin becomes quite hard. This sweet is quite rich and heavy, for me, I cannot have more than one of these at a time. It is very popular at weddings, birthdays and other celebrations.

But my most favorite sweet is gulaab-jamun, eaten with vanilla ice cream.