Baked Gulab Jamuns

Sorry no pictures for this one

Ingredients:

• Instant Gulab Jamun mix (MTR or Gits)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 cup water
• 4 coarsely grounded cardamom seeds
• 1 tablespoon sliced pistachio
• 2 tsp oil

Directions:

Syrup:

• In a large pan, add water, sugar, and ground cardamom seeds and bring it to a boil.
• Let the syrup boil for a minute then remove it from the heat.
• Stir the syrup until the sugar is dissolved.
• Set the syrup aside.

Gulab Jamun:

• In a bowl, make a the dough of the Gulab Jamun mix. Add some extra oil to it.

• Let the dough sit for a few minutes. Knead the dough. Grease your hands with butter before working with the dough.

• Divide the dough into about small equal portions and roll them into round balls.

• Place the small round balls on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.

• The thing with baking jamuns is that they have to be lighter in colour than the fried ones. If too dark baked, then they will not absorb the sugar syrup.

• Let the gulab jamuns cool off for a few minutes before placing in the hot syrup.

• The gulab jamuns should sit in the hot syrup for at least 20 minutes prior to serving.

I made 2 batches of baked jamuns the other day as an experiment.. the first batch came out all nice and the second got a bit dark brown and did not absorb any syrup. The recipe is a trial an error thing, and i tried it because I did not want to stand in the kitchen near the hot oil, frying jamuns!

Tips to keep in mind to make baked jamuns work:
1. the jamuns should be very light brown baked.
2. the sugar syrup has more water than the sugar syrup used for fried jamuns.