I have done it again!!!!! I have created a great desert without any sugar at all and I used a sugar free syrup when I made these yummy gulab jamuns. This is popular in India and Pakistan. However the home made ones tastes a lot better. Even people in my family think so. Mr. Riaz as you all know is my offical taste tester.
I even told him take some to work with him and share some with one of my brother in laws and he likes it too. The syrup is made from either sugar free syrup or agave nectar. I seen this bottle of sugar free syrup on the shelf. I read the label to see what it consists of and it said manitol. Ok I am familiar it is used in making sugar free gum I used to eat when I was a teenager.
This is what it looks like. The bottle below is made by Ziyad and can be found in any store selling Middle Eastern groceries.
It can also be bought at Cermac here in Chicago. As you can tell that I have a very busy kitchen. 😀 This or agave nectar can be used. I am planning on using this also for future blog posts inshallah that requires syrup. This is for people who are diabetics like many of my friends and some family members and for people like me that is totally avoiding white sugar for other health reasons which I had already told you about in an earlier blog post.
I am going to do sugar free recipes for basbosa, lokma, kaunafa and peach cobler inshallah. For now this post is about gulab jamun. To someone from Africa it may be confused for puff puff in syrup. That is ok to think so and I hope everyone will try out this recipe and like it.
For the syrup itself add 1/4 cup of sugar free syrup, please refer to the image above or agave nectar in to a small pot. Add 1 oz. of water to the syrup with 3 green cardamoms crushed inside of a mortar and pestle, add either 4 pistacios, almonds or cashews to the mortar and pestle and crush and add to syrup mixture. Add 1 drop each of rose and kewra essance and bring to a boil. When it is hot remove from heat.
Now to make the jamuns to put in to the syrup mixture, add 3 handfuls of all purpose unbleached flour, 1 handful of nido milk powder, 1 pinch each of baking powder, suji (farina) and 4 0z. of water just a little at a time to make a dough. Add 3 tsp of cooking oil to the dough and knead it throughly.
Corn, canola, sunflower and safflower oils can be used. add 1/4 cup of oil to a wok and break of tiny pieces of and rolling it in to a ball and keep repeating until the dough is all used up. Fry in batches of 3 until they are golden brown then remove them and place them in the syrup mixture. Keep repeating the process until there is no more dough balls to be fried.
Place the lid on the finished gulab jamun and let the dough balls soak up all of this yummy syrup. Now this is how it is done and I hope you enjoy making these and enjoy eating them too.
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