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Chhenabara

It is fried to a burnt brown crust over a centre that stays soft.

Vegetarian, but not vegan — contains dairy (chhena), dairy (ghee), dairy (whole milk).

Ingredients

Method

  1. IT IS FRIED TO A BURNT BROWN CRUST OVER A CENTRE THAT STAYS SOFT. Its article defines the sweet by where it sits between two others: it shares a cottage-cheese basis with rosogolla and a BURNT BROWN CRUST with pantua. So the target is a genuine contrast rather than an even colour -- a dark, almost scorched shell with a pale, wet, barely-set middle. That means frying hot enough to colour the outside fast and pulling it out before the heat reaches the centre, which is the opposite instruction to Pantua, as on its own page, where low slow frying takes the colour all the way through.
  2. SO THE OIL IS HOTTER AND THE TIME SHORTER. 175C, three to four minutes. Hot and brief is what gives a crust over a soft interior; low and long gives a uniform biscuit.
  3. THEY ARE SHAPED AS FLATTENED ROUNDS, WHICH HELPS. A patty about two centimetres thick has a centre the heat takes longer to reach than a ball of the same weight.
  4. THE CURD IS KNEADED SMOOTH AND BARELY BOUND. Two tablespoons of semolina and no more. The softness of the middle is the point and flour would set it.
  5. THEY GO INTO COOL SYRUP, NOT WARM. The one place among these sweets where that is right: cool syrup slows the absorption so the crust stays distinct for a few hours instead of softening into the rest.
  6. A ONE-THREAD SYRUP AND A SHORT SOAK. Six hundred grams of sugar to six hundred millilitres of water, and thirty to forty minutes only. Left overnight the crust dissolves and the contrast the sweet exists for is gone.
  7. THEY ARE EATEN THE SAME DAY. Everything about this one is a texture that does not keep.
  8. ITS ARTICLE PLACES IT IN MURSHIDABAD and notes that outsize ones are given as gifts to important visitors, which is a reasonable guide to scale if you want to make them large: the same method, two minutes longer, and the centre will still be soft.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

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