Kalakand | Diwali Sweets

When I first decided to post sweets in my blog for Diwali, the first thing that came into mind was milk and ghee sweets. I am a milk sweet lover while the huss loves anything and everything that even spells ghee in it. I thought of making ghee mysorepak and seven cup cake for the huss and made this huge batch of ghee. However milk overpowered ghee later and I bought this gallon of whole milk to make milk sweets. I tried many varieties, four to be more precise and I have already blogged about two of them ~ rasgulla and khoya burfi.

Coming to this sweet, appearance wise it has a close resemblance to the khoya burfi but texture wise it is so different. This is not so crumbly, is fudgy and literally melts in the mouth when you take a bite. More than anything this is easy to make when compared to the burfi. Well the burfi is easy to make if you buy khoya from the store or if you chose to make the khoya using a cheat's recipe. The huss said he preferred this kalakand to the burfi owing to the texture and that is what I felt too.

I was out of nuts ~ no almonds, no pistachios, only walnuts and cashews. Well I didn't want to garnish the slices using walnuts cos who would do that and the crushed cashews did not seem to give an appealing look when I ran a few test pics. So finally I thought of melting some dark chocolate and drizzling it over the kalakand. Sounded like a plan and so melted some chocolate in the double boiler, assembled everything and sat down to strew the chocolate over, when pappu came running over. After loads of cajoling and begging, he sat by to watch what I was up to.

Took a spoonful of chocolate, held it high over the kalakand and **BAM** he caught my hand and started shaking it, chocolate flew everywhere, the spoon fell on the kalakand and there sat that innocent piece dressed up in chocolate. I was left with no other option but to plop the chocolate all over the sweet and I restrained it to just two pieces. The huss obviously did not like the chocolate clad ones and they were left for me. It would have been nice if it was just a few specks of chocolate but the choclate layer masked the sweetness of the kalakand. So do not fall for the pics and ignore the dressing up that I have done.

Prep time: 35 mins; Cooking time: 30 mins; Makes - 7-8 medium sized ~*What U Need*~ Whole milk - 2 + 2 cups Lemon Juice - 1 1/2 tbsp Sugar - 1/4 cup + 1/8 cup Cardamom - 1, seeds crushed Ghee - to grease the plate Pistachios, melted chocolate - to garnish How I Made it: Add 2 cups of milk to a heavy bottomed vessel and when it starts to boil add the lemon juice. When the whey starts separating, remove from flame and drain into a clean muslin cloth. Rinse well in running tap water to remove the lemon smell off the paneer. Squeeze out the water and hang it undisturbed for 30 mins till the excess water drips off. Once this is done, take the remaining 2 cups milk and in medium flame reduce the milk to half that is 1 cup. Add the cardamom seeds and sugar and boil it. Add the paneer to the milk and mix well. Heat the mixture till the moisture leaves and it becomes a lump. Grease a plate with ghee. Pour the milk mixture onto the plate and refrigerate it for 1 hour. Once completely cooled, garnish with sliced pistachios or melted chocolate. Store refrigerated in an airtight container.

Serve @ room temperature!!!

** My Notes:
** Heat the mixture till the moisture is completely gone, if you swirl the mass around the pan, you will see no traces of liquid.
** You can do this in the microwave too.
** You can add saffron soaked milk too.

So thats it Folks...
With Love,

Signs off!!!