Strawberry Rasgulla

Rasgulla, rassagollas or rasagullas, this juicy Indian cheese based sweet is popular all around the world and its particularly famous in Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha.Rasgullas is made from a ball shaped dumpling of paneer, the famous Indian cheese cooked in sugar syrup. Coming to this strawberry rasgullas, i chosed to make for this week's blogging marathon. The theme of this week's blogging marathon is cooking with fruits, Srivalli the brain child of this monthly event suggested few fruits and obviously we need to cook from the list of the fruits she have given. I chosed berries and my favourite strawberries, eventhough its not strawberry season here. I have already freezed some fresh strawberries during their peak season for further use. Frozen strawberries are seriously very handy and you can make many desserts with them.

Coming to this rasgullas, i made a puree of strawberry and some finely chopped frozen strawberries while preparing the sugar syrup in which the paneer balls are cooked later. I didnt used any food colour and these cheese balls got their colour from the strawberry-sugar syrup while cooking.Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#34.This beauties are going Diwali Delicacies Event, hosted by me and Sangee Vijay of spicy treats.

2litres Full fat milk
3tbsp Lemon juice
1+1/2cups Sugar
1cup Strawberry puree
1/2cup Frozen strawberry (chopped roughly)
3cups Water
1/2tsp Cardamom powder

Take the milk in a heavy bottomed vessel,bring boil and keep stirring to avoid burning of milk..

Once the milk comes to boil, start adding the lemon juice and keep stirring.

Put the flame in simmer and cook for few seconds until the milk solids gets separates from the whey.Switch off the heat.

Pour this curdled milk to the already lined muslin cloth over a strainer,squeeze out all the whey water and rinse the milk solids/paneer under water and squeeze out the water as much as possible.

Place a heavy weight over the drained milk solids/paneer to squeeze out the water completely.

Take the paneer in a vessel,mash it well and knead for few minutes until they turns soft.

Make medium sized balls from the smooth dough, take care not to have any crack on the ball.

Boil the water in a pressure cooker,add the sugar,cardamom powder and strawberry puree,chopped strawberries to the water,bring to boil.

Add the already prepared paneer balls to the cooking syrup. Put the lid and cook till 3 hisses.

Once the pressure gets released,open the lid and transfer the strawberry rasgullas to the bowl and let them cool completely.

Arrange in fridge for an hour before serving topped with sliced almonds.