Today I will share the recipe of kalakand. It is a traditional Indian sweet, a specialty of Rajasthan. It is in fact a type of milk cake. Traditionally it involves slow cooking of milk, and then partially curdling it with alum. But here I will share a quick method to make it using sweetened condensed milk (I used milkmaid). It shortens the time of cooking to about 15 minutes.
Ingredients
1 can sweetened condensed milk
250 gm paneer/cottage cheese/curd finely grated or properly mashed
2 tablespoons powder milk/milk solids optional
1/4 teaspoon green cardamom powdered
1 tablespoon pisctachios/dry fruits slivered
1 rectangular container greased
Method* Take a heavy bottomed pan. Pour condensed milk in it. Add crumbled paneer and milk solids (powder milk) to it. Mix everything well.
* Switch on the heating, and cook the mixture on low heat. Continuously stir the mixture. Occasionally scrape the base of the pan too, else contents stick to the base, and burn.
* After some time the mixture thickens abd starts leaving the side. It took me about fifteen minutes. The time may vary. Now switch off the heating.
* Add cardamom powder to the mixture.
* Now pour this mixture to the greased pan. Level the content using table spoon.
* Sprinkle pistachio slivers, and press gently using table spoon so that the pistachios get embedded on the surface of kalakand. You can add any other dry fruit too. If you like to eat plain kalakand you can skip this step. In my home plain kalakand is more popular, so I avoid adding dry fruits.
* When the mixture is slightly cold, keep the container in refrigerator for couple of hours.
* On taking out the container from the refrigerator, you will see that the mixture is set, and has completely solidified.
* Cut square pieces of medium size using a knife. Pick out the pieces gently with the help of knife and place them on a serving plate. If you want to eat it later you can keep kalakand in an airtight container, and store in refrigerator. It remains fresh for couple of days.