Kalakand is a popular and delicious Indian sweet. Its made by mixing Paneer with sugar and further mixing them with Reduced milk. Its a pretty dense milk fudge. It’s soft, grainy and delicious. It has a light flavor of Cardamom and saffron.
It has a subtle flavoring of cardamom and fragrance of Saffron. The top is decorated with Almonds and pistachios. You can also add some Rose petals. This recipe helps you make Kalakand at home with ease. The fact is when you are in a country far from home and you don’t get your favorite sweets where you live, then you have to make them at home. This recipe has all the details that will make the perfect Kalakand, the exact flavor from our home country.
Not that this recipe will be easy, but for sure the steps from this recipe are simple to understand and if you follow them properly, your Kalakand will be as amazing as it should be. The recipe is made from scratch and you can do it pretty easily, no fancy gadgets or ingredients needed either. It requires basic skills to stir well and stay focused for an hour and trust me, the result won’t just amaze you but it will be worth every second you spend. My hometown Jodhpur has some wonderful stores that specialize in making Kalakand and every time my family wanted kalakand, we would always get it from that particular sweet shop. When I tried making it at home, my mother definitely thought that I have gone completely nuts, but I didn’t have another option. Another problem with sweet stores in USA is that they do not make sweets other than those which are popular like Bengali sweets, one or 2 kinds of laddus, jalebi to name a few. They do sell Burfi but if you ever feel that you will find a wide variety like India then you will be highly disappointed and that’s when people like me come in and teach you easy ways of making your own.
Kalakand recipe is made using a handful of very basic ingredients like Homemade Cottage cheese/Paneer, Milk, cardamom crushed / cardamom powder, saffron, sugar and almonds+pistachios to garnish. As fancy as it looks, there is actually nothing too hard about this scrumptious sweet dish. Kalakand is best served cold, so make sure you keep it refrigerated.
Just make sure you keep a few things in mind when you decide on making Kalakand. Its always advisable to use freshly homemade Paneer. Fresh Paneer is soft in texture and blends well when we cook it with milk, giving that perfect grainy texture to the Kalakand, which is what you really want. A store bought Paneer is usually not too fresh and becomes firm. A firm and old Paneer or a frozen Paneer will never give you the same results. Almonds, Pistachios are rose petals look on Kalakand. To make it look more expensively rich, adding a few saffron strands would be great too. Enjoy!!!
| Prep Time | 3 hours |
| Cook Time | 40 minutes |
| Servings |
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- 10 cups Whole Milk
- 1 1/4 cup granulated Sugar
- 2 tbsp White Vinegar
- 5 cups ice cold water
- 1/2 tsp cardamom powder
- 1 tsp Ghee
- 2 tbsp Almonds + Pistachios crushed
- 2 tsp Dry Rose petals
- 1/8 tsp saffron strands
- 2 tsp rose water
Ingredients
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- For making Paneer, add 4.5 cups milk to a pan, and heat over medium heat. Let it come to a boil. Stir occasionally.
- Once boiled, turn off the heat. Add the White Vinegar and stir.
- Keep stirring until the milk has curdles up completely and the whey is separated
- Place a muslin cloth over a colander. Pour the curdled milk over cloth and discard the whey. Rinse it well with the ice-cold water to get rid of the sour taste.
- Leave it hanging or in the colander to drain the excess water, for around 30 minutes. Your Paneer will them be ready to use.
- Pour he remaining milk to a heavy-bottomed non-stick pan over medium heat. Stir and let it come to a boil, around 10 minutes. Stir often to prevent it from burning and sticking to the pan.
- Next, crumble the paneer using fingers and add it to the boiling milk. Keep cooking and stirring constantly until the milk has thickened and reduced.
- Add Cardamom powder, rose water and saffron to it and mix well.
- Add sugar to it and stir well and let the sugar dissolve completely. Cook for 10 minutes, stirring continuously. Once the sugar has dissolved, cook for about 5 more minutes. The mixture at this point would look thick and a little clumpy, which is perfect. It should also leave the sides of the pan. Turn off the heat.
- Grease a glass tray or a baking tray with ghee. Pour the hot milk mixture to the prepared greased tray. Spread and flatten the mixture using a spatula.
- Spread the crushed Almonds and Pistachios and Rose petals. You can add a few more saffron strands too if you desire. Press nuts gently with a spatula to make sure that they are nicely tucked in.
- Let it set for an hour at the room temperature till it cools down and then in the refrigerator for 2 hours or more. Cut in small squares or rectangles and serve.
