Kala Jamun

22 standard portions

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Ingredients

• 1 cup mawa/khoya (mashed, 250 grams)
• 1/2 cup + 1 teaspoon chena (125 grams, mashed or use grated paneer)
• 1/2 cup all purpose flour (64 grams, maida)
• pinch baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon cardamom powder
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped cashews (optional, only if stuffing the jamuns)
• 3 cups sugar (600 grams)
• 4 cups water (32 oz)
• 4 teaspoons rose water (20 ml)
• 2 teaspoons kewra water (10 ml)
• 10 whole green cardamoms (crushed)
• generous pinch saffron strands
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice (10 ml)

Method

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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!