To know gulab jamun is to love them. Individually the ingredients are powerhouses, but combined they are unstoppable. Like the dessert version of the 1990’s Chicago Bulls. That makes Pippen the cardamom, Jordan the rose water, and Rodman the, well, nuts. But deep frying things is intimidating (like Kerr), so being able to have the textures and flavors of these little donuts in an easy-to-assemble cake is like winning a championship ring. Ok, I am done with basketball references. This cake is truly
something special. Maybe my favorite cake yet. I wish I could take credit for the recipe, but it’s just my tweaking of the Gulab Jamun Cake by Hetal Vasavada. Hetal, wherever you are right now, you should be wearing a jersey with the number 23 on it.
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Prep pan
Cake
- 1 cup of butter (I prefer salted, but you do you), room temperature
- 1 1/3 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup of milk powder, non-fat if possible
- 1 cup of white sugar
- 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 4 large eggs, room temperature
Gulab Jamun Syrup
- 1 cup of water
- 1 cup of white sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon of saffron threads (if you don’t have saffron, you can use turmeric)
- 8 cardamom pods, slightly smashed
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 teaspoon of rose water
- 2 teaspoons of fresh lime juice
Icing
- 1 cup of powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon of dried rose petals (optional, for decoration)
- 1 tablespoon of pistachios (optional, for presentation)
Instructions
Step 1
Pre-heat your oven to 325° and prep your bundt pan with Bundt Gunk, or grease with butter.
Step 2
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour and milk powder until combined.
In a larger bowl, add the butter, sugar, and ground cardamom, and beat with a hand-mixer until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add salt and vanilla beat again to combine. Add the eggs one at a time making sure each is fully incorporated before adding the next.
Step 3
With a spatula, mix in the dry ingredients until just incorporated. You’re looking for as few stirs as possible to combine the dry ingredients with the wet.
Step 4
I use a cookie scoop to fill my bundt pan because the blobs of batter seem to settle in the nicest way. You can also spoon the batter in. Just go slowly and the let the batter settle into its new home. You can tap the pan to remove any air bubbles, but if you filled the pan slowly, you shouldn’t have any.
Step 5
Bake for 30-35 minutes. You want the cake to be a nice golden brown, and you want a toothpick to come out cleanly, but you also really don’t want to dry out the cake.
Step 6
While the cake is baking, make the syrup. In a saucepan, bring the water, sugar, saffron,
cardamom pods and cinnamon stick to a boil over medium heat. Reduce the heat and let it
simmer for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the rose water and lime juice. Let the flavors steep until your cake is done baking.
Step 7
When your cake is done baking, let it sit for about ten minutes. During this resting period,
remove the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods from the syrup and reserve ¼ cup of it for your icing. After the ten minutes is up, take a skewer, or a fork if you don’t have a drawer filled with skewers like I do, and piece a whole lot of holes in the cake. More is more here. Every hole you poke is another avenue for the syrup to penetrate the cake.
Step 8
Spoon the syrup over the cake trying your best to evenly distribute it. If you think it’s too much, just keep going. The milk powder in the cake really helps to absorb it. Let the cake sit for another ten minutes then invert onto your serving platter.
Step 9
In a medium bowl, stir together the icing sugar and reserved syrup to make an icing.
While the cake is still slightly warm, but not hot, pour the glaze over the bundt and decorate with rose petals and pistachios. If the cake is still a little warm, the icing will nicely roll down the sides.
Step 10
Horace Grant, if you’re reading this, I didn’t forget about you. In fact, you’re still one of my favorites.
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