Shondesh

One more Sweet recipe for this festival season. This recipe is very easy to make in very less time. No need of making syrup and no deep frying and grinding. Only thing you have to do is curdle the milk means, you have to make fresh paneer. Yes the recipe is Shondesh as traditionally Bengalis call this sweet but rest of us known it as Sandesh. Freshly made paneer with little sweet taste and nice flavor of cardamom or any other flavor like saffron.
To day another edition of blogging marathon started  and I have chosen Festival food easy mithai for 7 days. For this  seven days I am going to post easy mithai recipes. In those this Delicious Bengali delight Shondesh is the first recipe and here I go with the recipe
Recipe source from eCurry
INGREDIENTS:--
Milk  --- 1 lit.(whole milk)
Lemon juice or vinegar --- 1/2 cup (I used 1/2 cup of curd)
Sugar --- 1/2 cup (check the sweet and adjust)
Cardamom powder  -- 1/2 tea sp
Cashew powder --- 3 tab sp
METHOD:---
1. Boil milk in a medium heat and bring to a full boil, keep stirring.
2. Add Lemon juice stir well, increase the heat little bit. The milk will curdle in few minutes, When the milk start curdling you can see the clean water from the sides. When you see this way water switch off the heat and do not over cook. over cook makes your paneer hard.
3.Tranfer the paneer though a sieve or cheesecloth, pour some cold water over paneer and let it drain all the water for 1 hour.
4. Take paneer in to a mixing bowl. Here you can do the process in a food processor but traditionaly Shondesh is made with hand. So mash the paneer with your hand and knead for about seven minutes.
5. Then add sugar, cashew powder, cardamom powder and knead for 3 more minutes by the time you can fell your hands will becoming oily and paneer will become smooth.
6. Take a small portion from the smooth paneer mixture and roll it in to rounds.
This should be soft out side If you take off the paneer from heat in right time then you get a soft Shondesh. If you over cook the paneer it will become hard and you get cracks out side so take care when you are making paneer.
This is my first recipe for Blogging Marathon 14 th edition in the theme of Festival food - quick and easy mithai and lets check the Marathon page.