mawa substitute

passingby

I am interested in cooking the indian sweets in the west, but the base of the sweets in india is mawa.
can you substitute mawa with something else in USA or Canada? something I can buy in the stores.
if not, what is the quickest and easiest way to make mawa?
but again, I would rather buy a similar product.

jyotirmoy

You can make great sweets using paneer. For mawa mix equal portion of full cream milk & condensed milk, mix well & boil the mixture while stiring all the while. Use a thick bottomed wide karahi so that a large surface area is exposed & the water vapour easily escapes.
Go on reducing, when quite thick reduce flame. To shorten reducing time use a bit of corn starch.
I had posted a recipe for a very easy to make dessert in the What's for dinner thread.

passingby

thank you for the mawa recipe. I have lots of sweets recipe in a book I have bought here. I am interested in gulab juman and I need mawa for it. I have noticed that lots of sweets require mawa.
anybody in the west... do you know if I can buy something similar to mawa in the west?

jyotirmoy

Last summer I saw in some stores in Berlin pouches of Gulab Jamun mix so I presume these to be available in US too due to large Indian population. While in India you can check out at any of the good food stores for this. Do buy the suff called "Elach dana", these are tiny balls of confectioner's sugar. Place one or two of these in the core of the Gulab Jamuns, these will melt & fill the inside with syrup.

jaybel

HI..
The nearest substitute is ricotta cheese. As Jyotiji said boil milk and condensed milk, see that you use evaporated milk and NOT condensed milk as it has sugar added to it...

__________________

Jaybel

jyotirmoy

hi jaybel when did you add the ji suffix to my name?

jaybel

sorry a grave mistake.. it shld read as jyotirmoy...!!! hopefully for given...

jyotirmoy

ha ha! jaybel there is nothing wrong with jyoti, easier on the keyboard!

kalyani68

Mawa is also called khoa or khoya. It is made in different consistencies based on what texture you need.
It does take time and constant stirring to make.
Four cups of whole milk will boil down to about 6 ounces of mawa milk fudge.

Let us know how it all turns out....

Eldaras

that recipe is very similar to the one used to make "Dulce de Leche" (or Milk Sweet). If you guys ever come to argentina you HAVE to eat Dulce de Leche... it's one of the most tasteful sweet things

passingby

thank you guys for the info.
in about a month I should go back to north-america and then I will try to make my own gulab juman. I will let you know if I get the mawa right and if I will be successful with the gulab juman and other indian sweets.

passingby

a great website to find substitute recipes for mawa/khoya if you want to make indian sweets outside india. great website!

http://www.bawarchi.com/features/feature5.html

GoanCanuck

In Canada the Indo-Canadian community uses the term khowa not mawa and you can buy the gulab jamun mix in Toronto and Vancouver at dozens of different stores. Don't know about Montreal but if you need a carton just let me know and I can mail it to you. The store that sells it is just 2 blocks from my house. Generally speaking gulab jamun is not easy to make for a first timer.