African Gulab Jamun

Today after a hard ping-pong game against Tobbe I decided to try to make my own Gulab Jamun, a little Indian delicacy I picked up a taste for in Boston thanks to my friend Carol there (and her Mom, who also was an expert at it and frequently sent Carol copious amounts of them). Also, it's a celebration to my new "Recipes" link list that I added to the right where all my faithful readers and myself can quickly access recipes to food I happen to like. Oh, and I didn't really feel I could claim that this was "real" Gulab Jamun, not having used Carol's recipe, so I had to call it something else. As Tobbe was simultaneously cooking African food as I was preparing this (it smells GREAT!) the choice fell on "African Gulab Jamun". Hope you'll enjoy it! Me, I'm off to try Tobbe's banana garlic curry inspired dish now. :-P


The ingredients for African Gulab Jamun.


Boil the water and sugar into a (not very thick) syrup, then take it off the heat and add rosewater, cardemom and saffron.


Mix the powder milk, flour and baking soda and then add cream until the dough gets slightly sticky.


Of the dough, roll about twenty tiny balls, they should ideally be even smaller than in this picture. When deep fried, they will expand to about twice the size. Put some of the extra cream on your hands every now and then to make rolling them easier.


Put the oil on medium heat for about 5 min and then lower the temperature and throw in the balls. When they start swell up and start to float, increase the temperature and stir gently until they have an even gold brown color.


When done, lift them out of the oil (with a spoon or something, please, NOT with your fingers!) and put them on some paper to dry and cool down. Warm the syrup you made before a little and then put the Gulab Jamun in there to soak. Squeeze them carefully so they suck up as much as humanly (bally?) possible of that yummy syrup. When you feel happy with your work, you can store them along with the syrup in a container kept cold forever (this stuff is so sweet it will never go bad). Of course, chances are they won't be around for very long anyway. And, a little piece of advice, don't eat more than one or two of these little bombs. ;-)