Homemade Rasmalai is a bit of a flex you know? Like “oh this, I made it” casually dropped somehow never fails to impress. As long as your recipe doesn’t of course. So today I am here to share with you not just the recipe, but the make or break tips to making beautiful, soft ras malai that stays soft and doesn’t break. Before I proceed I am going to give a little shout out to my mother, whose recipe is what I ultimately leaned on when other popular ones failed me entirely. I know, I know, we are supposed to keep it profesh here now and not talk about personal lives, but I have got to give credit where it’s due.
Table of Contents
What is Rasmalai? Making Rasmalai with Milk Powder Five Tips for PERFECT Rasmalai Making Ras Malai: Ingredients How to make Rasmalai with Milk Powder: Step by Step Desi Dessert Fan?
What is Rasmalai?
The word Ras means juice and Malai means cream. You put the two together and it invokes something far for poetic than it’s literal English translation. Rasmalai or Ras Malai, is a traditionally South Asian dessert where ‘pedas’ or little disc shaped mounds of a soft dough are cooked in milk in such a way that they cook through and absorb the flavour of the milk. Traditional Ras malai ‘pedas’ or dough is made using “chenna” or a South Asian cottage cheese that’s made via a process which requires cooking milk and then curdling it. It takes a little time and practice to master the art of making the perfect ras malai discs.
Making Rasmalai with Milk Powder
While making Ras malai from scratch requires finesses, after trying many many iterations of the milk powder (Nido) recipes, I have concluded that Milk Powder Ras Malai requires almost the opposite. Confused? Let me explain: there is no real art here, no tweaking or adjusting like with Meethi Tikiyaan, you just do the work and do it fast for the best results.
Five Tips for PERFECT Rasmalai
1.) Use a wide bottomed pan: ras malai needs space to cook, to expand, a wide bottomed pan is what is best. I use a 10-inch skillet. 2.) Bring the milk to a boil first to dissolve the sugar, then turn down to a low simmer. Don’t even look at the Nido jar until you’re at this point. 3.) When the milk is simmering then start making your dough. To get smooth balls it is imperative that the mixture be quickly mixed, quickly shaped, and quickly dropped (this is some “phurti” in action. If you wait too long the mixture tends to dry out and your dough becomes hard and cracks. 4.) I have tried cooking with various temperatures, but the safest approach is a gentle simmer. A robust boil can lead to the outside cooking and the inside staying hard, simmer-less milk won’t cook it. 5.) DO NOT touch the dough balls until they’re soft and rise to the surface of the pan, it is then and ONLY then that you can flip them.
Making Ras Malai: Ingredients
Peda/Dough: Full fat milk powder (I use Nido), baking powder for fluffiness, oil for moisture (you can use melted ghee too), a little all purpose flour, and egg to bind and cook. Note: the amount of egg tends to vary across recipes, conventional wisdom being to start with 3 tbsp of egg which leaves about a tbsp in the bowl. I find that to be a little fiddly and that the whole egg works just fine. In Canada the standard large egg is 56g. Milk Mix: Whole milk, cardamom pods, a pinch of salt, sugar for sweetness, and pistachios
How to make Rasmalai with Milk Powder: Step by Step
Step One: Combine the milk, sugar, and salt in a wide bottomed skillet/pan and bring to a boil on medium heat. You need this heat to dissolve the sugar crystals. Mix well and bring down to a gentle simmer. You can add pistachios now or later. Note: Many recipes call for a lot more milk, but in my experience people tend to take a little ras malai and a little milk to bathe it in, when I use a full litre of milk it becomes too much. I also like the milk mix having a light sweetness so I don’t cook it down much, but you can do whatever works for you! Step Two: As the milk simmers away mix the ingredients to make the dough. Work quickly and deftly, your dough will be soft and slightly sticky, but as the ingredients incorporate in it’ll become drier. Mix the dough, and QUICKLY shape into 10-12 balls, they’ll be about an inch or so big. Flatten the dough and drop into the milk, continue doing so until your dough is used up. Step three: Add your pistachios if you haven’t yet, and gently (read: barely) simmer on low, covered for 5 minutes. The dough balls should have risen, flip them over, cover, cook for another 5 minutes and turn the stove off. They will expand as they cook and as they cool. Once they cool then you can transfer them one by one into your dish of choice and refrigerate. Ras Malai tastes infinitely better the next day IMHO as the mix cools and any residual egginess goes away.
Desi Dessert Fan?
I got you - here are some Flour & Spice favorite Pakistani Dessert Recipes
Shahi Tukray Bread Kheer Chanay ki Daal ka Halwa Kulfi Chawal ki Kheer Caramel Pudding/ Flan
Making this Rasmalai? Don’t forget to read my tips above! Made it already? Leave a rating and comment! Would love to hear your thoughts and see your recreations on Instagram @flourandspiceblog
