Burfee

INGREDIENTS

  • 500g full-fat powdered milk

  • 1 cup full-fat milk

  • 360g icing sugar

  • 1 cup water

  • 60g butter

  • rose essence

  • cardamom powder

DESCRIPTION

Burfee is a very milk-based confection flavoured with rose and cardamom, it’s probably one of my favourite diwali sweets.

Caution
 Getting the syrup right here is crucial, and is the easiest part of this to screw up, as I have done many times. You want to err on the side of too thick. You want to boil the syrup until it’s quite sticky when allowed to cool, you can take a spoonful out and see how it behaves in open air to check your texture. My mother recommends you boil it for at least 20 minutes at a medium boil. You aren’t making candy here, you don’t want to get rid of all the water, but you can get pretty close to thread stage before you’ve gone too far, and you could theoretically bring it back from threads with a little water.

Historically burfee is prepared with Khoa, a kind of dehydrated whole milk product. In the modern day, commercially produced whole milk powder is a much easier to handle ingredient. The high sugar and low moisture content means they’ll last days to weeks at room temperature and well over a month in a fridge.

Rose essence is not too hard to find, but I have had to order it online sometimes. Different rose-essences taste very different, and finding one you like can take some time. I’ve had good luck with the TRS brand rose essence in glycol.

People differ greatly on how much of each flavour to use. Some people only do cardamom! Those people are wrong. I say about a teaspoon of cardamom and a tablespoon of rose essence is a good start, but you can just taste it and adjust.

The dough will become very firm if you let it set all the way, I recommend working it roughly as soon as it cools enough to handle. I just shape blocks by hand, some people have fancy forming moulds, and other people form slabs and slice shapes out like it’s fudge. Shaping the blocks by hand is kind of a pain in the ass because the dough is very temperature sensitive and loves to stick to your skin and leave behind a sugary, milky residue. I will sometimes just wear nitrile gloves to handle it, but this is a convenience thing. Cooler dough is less messy but forms less robust blocks.

You can decorate this various ways, I typically do roasted slivered almonds, but other options include powdered sugar, powdered milk, shredded coconut and gold leaf.

PREPARATION

  1. Mix milk powder and milk liquid together, and rub until it forms a crumb-like texture, a little like if you were making scones.

  2. Put icing sugar, butter, and water in a pot large enough that you can add that milk powder mix later, and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil the sugar syrup until it becomes fairly sticky, you want at least 20 minutes at a gentle boil.

  4. Lower the heat on the syrup and add the milk powder mixture and stir it in over low heat for a few minutes.

  5. Take the mixture off the heat. Allow it to cool a little. Mix in flavours to your taste.

  6. Once it’s cool enough to handle, form shapes and set aside.

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