Erivum Puliyum: Chum Chum(Cham Cham) | Bengali Chom Chom Mithai~ Happy Diwali Wishes !!

Wishing all my dears a very Happy and safe Deepavalli (Diwali) !!

Hope everyone is having a great time enjoying with your family and dear ones. Let the festival of lights, the beautiful fireworks, brightens each one's lives with happiness and joy throughout the year. I love Diwali and so do the sweets. This year I planned to try a bookmarked recipe since long and a wish come true when I tried my hands on making the popular sweet from Bengal, Cham Cham. Chum Chum are usually off-white, rose or light yellow or brown coloured(depending on the essence used) and are oval shaped unlike round rasagullas.

This sweet is prepared by curdling milk and similar to rasagullas. But still there are a few differences in the texture and making as well. Rasagullas are boiled in a thin sugar syrup whereas cham cham is boiled in a slightly thicker sugar syrup and so cham cham is more on a denser side when you hold the cham cham in your hand after soaking the sugar syrup, yet it's soft. Rasagullas are more airy and spongy. Cham cham is prepared in a thicker sugar syrup, as it has to be stuffed with a sweet filling made with mawa. But here I have tried an easy version of making mawa using milk powder which worked fine too but not so good as the mawa made by reducing whole milk. I have already posted the homemade mawa recipe from scratch if you are interested check that out. However, this milk powder mawa recipe worked good here, as I just needed to make the stuffing with this. These are really delicious with sugar syrup coated covering and mawa filling. Do give this a try and enjoy !!!

Preparation time ~ 20 minutes

Cooking time ~ 30 minutes

Author ~ Julie

Serves ~ 6-7

Ingredients

to make paneer

whole milk 1 litre

lemon juice 2tbsp

to make sugar syrup

granulated sugar 1/2 kg

water 1 cup

maida 1tbsp

to make filling

milk powder 1/2 cup

whole milk 1/4 cup + 2-3 tbsp extra to soak saffron

unsalted butter, 2 tbsp

elakka podi /cardamom powder 1 tbsp

saffron strands few or cherry pieces

for garnish

dessicated coconut 1/4 cup

Method

Boil the milk in a pan and let it come to a rolling boil. Dilute the lemon juice with equal amount of water and start adding little by little to the boiling milk. Switch off the flame immediately, else the paneer turns hard. Wait for 2 minutes before you add a little more(dilute the lemon juice and switching off the flame ensures that the paneer doesn't harden up and gives a smooth texture). Now, wait till the whey is separated nicely. Pour the contents into a bowl lined with cheese cloth. Collect the paneer in the cheese cloth and then pour fresh water to this (to reduce the temperature of the paneer and to get rid of sourness) and squeeze out all excess water. You can place some weight on it and drain the complete water by leaving aside for 15 minutes.
Crumble this paneer in a large plate and start to knead using the palms. Don't knead the paneer so hard that it starts to leave the oil. Knead the paneer just enough to form smooth balls. Shape the smooth balls to oval shapes and keep aside(Check pics below)
Filling- Soak the saffron in warm milk, keep aside. Add butter in a pan, add milk and wait till bubbles appear. To this, add milk powder and mix well without any lumps. Then, add the saffron mixed milk and cardamom powder. Mix well and the mixture starts to thicken. Finally, add chopped pistachios. The mixture starts to leave the sides of the pan, then switch off flame and move the pan from residual heat. Leave to cool.

In another bowl, add few strands of milk and half a tsp or a tsp of milk to get a thick saffron colour mix. Keep aside.
Sugar Syrup- Now, bring the sugar with water to a boil. When the mixture starts to boil and thickens slightly, reduce flame (the consistency of the sugar syrup should be slightly thicker than that we use for making rasagullas). Add the prepared oval shaped paneer balls. Bring this to a boil and add one tbsp of maida (adding maida helps even cooking of the cham cham and sugar syrup seeps well inside, and you may see bubbling of sugar syrup all around the pan, check pics for better understanding).

Boil the cham cham till it doubles in volume and the cham cham is filled with sugar syrup. Now remove some amount of sugar syrup, add a little boiled cooled water to slightly dilute the syrup along with the cooked chum chum. Cool lightly.
Squeeze the syrup slightly from the chum chum and then slit open the chum chum using a knife and place the prepared filling. Finally, place a dot in the centre of the filling with a strand of saffron.
Roll the prepared chum chum in dry dessicated coconut and place in a liner to serve. Enjoy with your loved ones!!

NOTES

* 1 litre milk yields 150 g-170 g paneer, depending on the fat content of milk.

* Ideally mawa is used to prepare the filling, but you can always prepare mawa from milk powder as I did here. The homemade mawa recipe is here.

* Don't curdle the milk completely with the heat on, as the paneer becomes hard. Switch off flame and add lemon juice little by little.

* You can add a pinch of pink colour to the paneer and add a drop of rose essence to make rose chum chum, similarly add a drop of orange colour and saffron to make saffron flavoured chum chum.

* Also, add a small piece of cherry instead of the saffron dot to make it vibrant.

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