Malai Chum Chum..A delicious Bengali dessert

Hello everyone. Today I am sharing my husband’s favorite dessert. I had made it for Diwali (Yeah, in Novemeber, 2015) and this was sitting in my draft for ages. It was high time I published it. It is a popular Bengali dessert that is made with Paneer or Indian cottage cheese. I was happy to finally get it right after a lot of failed attempts. I would like to give the credit for this success to my blogger friend Garima at Cafe Garima. Her no fail Rasgulla recipe is the best one around. Her tips and tricks have helped me make some delicous rasgullas, ras malali and of course this amazing chum chum. Thank you Garima. Do check out her blog..she is truely a dessert queen. 🙂

Without wasting any time, let’s make some Malai Chum Chum

Ingredients:

2% milk – 4 cups (You can use whole milk if you like)

Lemon Juice or Vinegar – 2 tbsp

Sugar – 1.5 cups

Water – 4 cups

Orange food color – a few drops, optional

Mawa (khoya) – 1/4 cup, grated (You can also use sweetend condensed milk for stuffing, skip the sugar)

Sugar – 1 tsp

Cardamom Powder – 1/4 tsp

Sliced pistachio and dessicated coconut for garnish

Method:

1. Boil 4 cups of milk in a heavy bottomed pan. Once it comes to boil, remove it from the flame. Wait for 2 minutes and then add the lemon juice. Keep stirring continously. The milk will start to curdle and you will notice a green whey. Add some ice cubes and let it rest for 5 minutes.
2. Place a muslin cloth in a strainer over another bowl and pour over this curdled milk to separate the whey and paneer or chenna. Rinse it well with a few glasses of cold water. This is important to remove the lemony flavor and smell from the paneer.
3. Tie the chenna in the muslin cloth and squeeze it gently to remove all the excess water. Hang this tied Chenna for about 20 minutes to get rid of all the excess water. This step is very important as any water residue in cheena will cause the chenna balls to break when they are boiled in sugar syrup.
4. Once the chenna is dry and crumbly, take it out in a plate. To know your chenna is ready for use, take a small portion of this and knead it well for a minute. If you are able to make a ball of it, its ready to use.
5. Add few drops of orange color to the chenna and knead it well with your palm till you get a good dough. Stop when it starts to leave out some fat or grease on your hands. Thats when you know its done. 10 minutes is a good estimate.
6. Divide this doough into 10 equal parts or more if you want smaller pieces. Take a portion and make an oval shaped patty with it. Make sure not to make them quite big as they will increase in size when boiled.
7. Now take a heavy bottomed pan and bring 4 cups of water and the sugar to boil. Once the sugar syrup has come to a boil, drop in the chenna balls, reduce the flame to a medium, cover and cook it for 7 – 8 minutes.
8. Flip the balls after 8 minutes and cook for another 5 minutes. They are usually done in a total cooking time of 12 – 15 minutes.
9. Once they are done, transfer them to another bowl and let them cool down to room tempearture. We will stuff them only after they are cold to touch.
10. To make the stuffing, mix together the grated mawa, sugar and the cardamom powder. You can also stuff these with some sweetened condensed milk if you don’t have mawa.
11. Once the chum chum have cooled down, cut it horizontaly, very gently so that it opens up like a burger and add a layer of the mawa stuffing. Close it back and do the same with all the pieces. Make sure to handle the chum chum pieces very carefully here.
12. Finally, roll these chum chum in dessicated coconut and sprinkle some sliced pistachios. Let them chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving. Enjoy.

So here is how i made this delicious and beautiful dessert. Do let me know if you try this out.

Thanks so much for stopping by.

Love,

Ritu. 🙂