Homemade Gulab Jamuns from Scratch | Dussera Special

Today is Vijayadasami, the last day of Navarathi. I am posting yet another sweet recipe - another one of my favorites too. Usually, we make Gulab Jamuns at home with store bought powder and for once I decided to make everything from scratch. This is an old recipe and the pictures, taken on my mobile. As I am travelling, I have to make do with these pictures - will update better pictures once I am home. Irrespective of how bad these pictures are, the recipes works and I can guarantee you of its awesomeness! 🙂

Without further delay, here is how I made it -

What I used -

Milk powder, 2 cups (I used Amul)
Maida/ All Purpose Flour, ½ cup + 1 tbsp
Cold Milk , ¼ cup (might not use all of it)
Butter/Ghee , 2 tablespoon + 1 tablespoon (for preparing the dough + making Jamun balls)
Cooking Soda, a pinch
Sugar, 2 cups
Water, 2 cups
Cardamom, 2
Oil, for deep frying

How I made -

In a mixing bowl - add milk powder, maida, 2tbsp of butter/ghee, cooking soda and mix well. Add only a teaspoon of cold milk to this mix at a time and keep mixing the dough. When the dough is crumbly, add milk carefully. Its important not to make the dough too dry or too watery. Ensure that the kneaded dough is smooth which would ensure that the Jamuns are not broken when rolled and later fried.
In a boiling pan, add sugar and water - bring it to boil. Its enough if the syrup comes to boil and all the sugar has been dissolved. Add the cardamom and keep it on low flame for a couple of minutes. Remove it from heat and keep aside.
Divide the dough into equal sized balls. Roll them tight and smooth between your palms. Adding a drop of ghee to your palms before rolling would ensure smooth creaseless Jamuns.
Heat oil in a kadai and keep it on low flame once the oil is hot. Fry these rolled Jamuns in batches of 3s or 4s until they are golden brown (or a tad bit more if you are like me). Drain them out on to a tissue paper. The temperature of the oil plays an important role here. Too hot, you will have dark brown Jamuns that are not cooked inside. Too low, the Jamuns absorb too much oil.
Let the fried Jamuns be cooled completely before putting them into sugar syrup. Unlike the Jamuns made with store bought powder, these Jamuns can be quite soft when hot and only on cooling completely, they can be transferred to the syrup.
Ensure that the sugar syrup is just warm when the Jamuns are added. Either the Jamuns or syrup is too hot, we would end up with broken Gulab Jamuns. I always use a wide mouthed dish to store the Jamuns as that way, the Jamuns are immersed properly and absorb enough sugar syrup. I have skipped rose essence as I am not a big fan and have instead used cardamom.

These homemade Gulab Jamuns were immensely loved by all at home. Actually both S and Amma have claimed that these taste way better compared the store bought ones and the best batch I have made so far. If you ask me - for the first attempt, they were not bad though the appearance could have been improved. But.. but.. who cares about how they look as they long as they taste the best, right?! Right. I guess it's going to be Gulab Jamuns this way at our home, from now on.