Sandesh

Sandesh is a simple delicious Bengali mithai that can be made very quickly with minimal ingredients and can easily transformed into multiple flavors/ types.

Its great to whip up a box full of 2-3 few flavors of Sandesh as a hostess gift or to take over when visiting friends and family for Indian festivals. below is a picture of a box I made to take to a friend’s place for a dinner party

You will need:

2 liter whole milk (1/2 gallon)

2.5 tbsp white vinegar

1 cup of cold water

1/2 cup of fine granulated/ powdered sugar (depending on how sweet you like your mithai, you can reduce or increase the amt. of sugar or replace with an alternative sweetener)

Different ingredients for flavoring and decoration. Read till the end for different flavor recommendations.

2 liters of whole milk makes about 300 g chenna. Dependimg on the wt. of sugar you add, you make about ~400g of sandesh.

this will make 30-40 pieces of mithai

Procedure:

• Heat the whole milk and bring it to a boil
• Mix 2 tbsp of white vinegar with a 1 a cup of cold water
• Turn off the heat and add the vinegar mixture little by little while stirring till the milk curdles and clear whey separates
• Strain on a cheesecloth, rinse with cold water and squeeze out all the whey – this is chenna

• Grind the chenna in a food processor – to make a smooth dough

• In a non-stick pan, heat together sugar and all the smooth chhenna and heat on medium flame for 2-3 minutes till all the sugar dissolves and the mixture becomes soft and starts coming together, leaving the pan.

• Once the mixture cools, its ready to be worked with to make different flavored Sandesh.

Kesar-Pista sandesh:

Add Kesar strands, crushed pistachios and some cardamom powder or extract, roll balls/ pedas and decorate with edible silver foil, and crushed+ sliced pistachios.

Rose-Lychee sandesh:

Mix a little rose extract in the sandesh mixture and pipe/ fill it inside deseeded lychee fruit cups (you can use canned whole lychees or fresh)

decorate with a strand of saffron, crushed rose petals and a little piece of gold foil