Dessert

Cham Cham is a popular Bengali Mithai. It is concocted using freshly prepared chena (cottage cheese). The recipe looks much similar to Rasgulla, but these Cham Cham's are much more tastier than the conventional Rasgullas. We can make many variations of the prepared cham chams.

Here are the different ways of serving Bengali Cham Cham.

1. We can either serve them as plain cham chams garnished with nuts 
2. We can coat the Cham Cham with dessicated coconut and garnish with nuts
3. We can serve the Cham Cham soaked in freshly prepared Malai
4. We can slit the Cham Cham and stuff it with Khova and nuts

I have given here the first 3 methods of serving Cham Cham. The last method is simple, we just need to slit the cooked cham cham and stuff it with khova and finely chopped nuts. 

Valentine's Day are always special. I always make some special sweet for my hubby :-). This time, I have planned to make these yummy Cham Cham. I am sharing this recipe specially for the occasion of Valentine Day. A perfect dessert to show our love to our beloved ones. 

Bengali Cham Cham Recipe | Malai Cham Cham Recipe | How to make Chum Chum

Preparation and Yield:

Preparation time	-
Cooking Time	45 mins
Yield	8

Bengali Cham Cham Recipe | Malai Cham Cham Recipe | How to make Chum Chum

Ingredients:

Milk	4 Cups* or 1 litre + 2 tablespoon
Lemon Juice	2 tablespoon
Sugar	2.5 Cups
Water	3.5 Cups
Cardamom Powder	1/4 teaspoon
Chopped Pistachios	1 teaspoon

Bengali Cham Cham Recipe | Malai Cham Cham Recipe | How to make Chum Chum

Method:

1. Heat a pan and add 1 litre of milk to the pan. Keep stirring until the milk starts to boil. We should get nice bubbles in the milk. Also keep stirring till you get bubbles. The stirring will help the fat to fully combine with the milk. If we don't stir, then the fat will separate from the milk and we would not get  soft and spongy cottage cheese. Meanwhile dilute the lemon juice with 1 tablespoon of water and keep it ready. 



2. When the milk starts to boil, switch off the flame and add the lemon juice little by little gradually. When milk starts to curdle, stop adding the lemon juice. Add 1/2 cup of cold water or ice cubes which helps to stop the curdling process. Also the cold water or ice cubes take out the sourness of lemon juice which we have added. Place a muslin cloth or thin cotton cloth over a strainer. Strain the curdled milk through the cloth covered strainer.



3. Cover the cloth and squeeze the cloth gently to remove excess water from the cheese. Also show the covered cloth under running water just to ensure the sourness of lemon is removed completely from the cheese. Squeeze the cloth gently and hang it for 30 minutes. In 30 minutes, the hung cloth would have removed most of the moisture from the cottage cheese.



4. If you open the cloth, you could see a ball of cottage cheese not completely dry, would have a little moisture and if you touch it would crumble into pieces as shown in the picture. lets knead the cottage cheese nicely using your palm. Knead the cheese for about 7-10 minutes to get soft and spongy Cham Cham. This knead is mandatory and is the main process to get softer Cham Chams



5. After 10 minutes, the kneaded cheese would be like a dough. make small lemon sized balls out of the cheese dough and then roll it into an oval shape. Make sure the sizes are not too big, because cooking the cheese balls in the sugar syrup doubles its size. Lets heat a cooker or a broad and thick bottomed vessel. Add water and sugar and bring it to boil. When the sugar syrup starts to boil with bubbles, add 2 tablespoon of milk to the boiling sugar syrup. Adding milk to the sugar syrup separates the dust from the sugar and makes it float at the top of the syrup. We can then easily remove the dust using a ladle. This step is optional. If you have clear white sugar, we can skip this. If any dust present in the sugar, it would make the syrup look slightly dull in colour and your Cham Cham would not look good in the dull sugar syrup. 



6. Make sure your sugar syrup is absolutely boiling and add cardamom powder and then drop the cheese balls in the sugar syrup. Cook the cheese balls in the sugar syrup for about 20 minutes with the pan closed with the lid. Gently stir the cheese balls every 5 minutes till they are cooked. You could see the size of the cheese balls gets doubled when they are fully done. Switch off the flame once they are done



7. Once the sugar syrup comes to room temperature, gently take the cham cham from sugar syrup and arrange in serving plate and garnish with pistachios



Bengali Cham Cham Recipe | Malai Cham Cham Recipe | How to make Chum Chum



8. We can also roll the cham cham in dessicated coconut and then arrange in serving plate and garnish with finely chopped pistachios. We can also make a slight twist. While kneading the cheese we can add few drops of saffron color and knead the cheese well and then cook them in sugar syrup and then coat them in dessicated coconut. I have not added color in this recipe. Serve the coconut coated Cham Cham dessert and enjoy this dessert with your beloved Valentine!



Bengali Cham Cham Recipe | Malai Cham Cham Recipe | How to make Chum Chum

Method for Evaporated Milk:

1. In a heavy bottomed pan, heat the milk. Stir the milk to avoid overflow. Allow the milk to boil till it becomes thicker and reduces to 1 cup of quantity



2. Now add sugar and saffron threads and continuously stir for 5Min's and remove from flame. So our Ras (Evaporated milk is now ready). Allow it to come to room temperature and then refrigerate it.



3. Now our malai is ready. Arrange the cham cham's in serving dish and pour the malai over the cham cham and serve the yummy & scrumptious Cham Cham. Enjoy these Cham Cham's with your valentine for this Valentine's Day