Baked Rasgulla ~ A Fusion dessert from Bengal

          Today I am back with a dessert which is known not to many, but belongs from the land of sweets, my Bengal. But this dessert is not from the huge lists of traditional sweet dishes of Bengal, rather a innovation of traditional Sweet shop owners, whoa re serving traditional sweets for more than 50 years to the people of Bengal, still they are brave enough to give a twist to traditional sweets and presenting a whole new sweet dish to the world. Nowadays, fusion desserts are very common in Bengal, they are making fusions using western desserts like Ice-cream, cake, souffle and mixing them to Indian ingredients, like Sandesh cake from K.C. Das(famous Sweet Shop) or this Baked Rasogolla and Gur-er(date plam jaggery) Souffle from Balaram Mullick & Radharaman Mullick(another famous sweet shop of Calcutta/Kolkata) and so on. If you havn't try one of these yet, plan a trip to Kolkata just to have a taste of these awesome sweets.  

     This baked Rasogolla is also an twist to traditional Rasmalai. Rasmalai is a dessert, where a steamed ball of chhana/Paneer/cottage cheese(Rasgulla) dunked in a sweetened and thickened milk. In this baked version, we are going to do the same, just we are going to make this in conventional oven instead of stove top and it also gives a burnt flavour to the dish, as we are going to brown the top of the dish. You can make with store-bought rasgullas too or make your own at home. I have heard a lot from friends about this dessert, but never tasted it, as the shop it makes is quite far from my home, so thought to make my own at home. This is very easy to make and what to say about the taste, it gives a whole new dimension to the traditional Rasmalai, just heavenly! Try it to believe me!

You Need :
Rasgulla : 9-10
Milk : 1 cup
Paneer/cottage cheese : 100 gms., crumbled
Sugar : 1/2 cup or use as per your taste
Saffron : few strands, soaked in 2 tblsp. of milk
Cornflour : 1 tsp. dissolved in 2 tsp. water
Cardamom Powder : 1/2 tsp.  

How To :

• Dissolve the rasgullas in water for couple of minutes. Then squeeze out all the sugar syrup from them. Try to remove sugar syrup as much as possible.
• In a blender, take milk, crumbled paneer, sugar, cornflour water and blend to a semi-smooth mixture. Add saffron soaked milk and cardamom powder and mix well.
• Preheat your oven to 200degreeC, take a baking dish, arrange the rasgullas , then pour the blended mixture evenly allover the dish covering the rasgullas well. Bake until the top sets and starts to brown. 

                                                                      Before Baking

 

                                                                     After Baking

• Serve warm or in room temperature.