Orissa’s Chenna Poda For ICC

When this month’s recipe for Indian Cooking Challenge was announced, I was not sure if I would take part. I read the recipe and left it at that. Today morning when I opened google reader, I saw this on Srivalli’s and Vaishali’s blog. The clicks were enough to tempt me. Suddenly I found the recipe to be very simple! Immediately I got the ingredients ready and waited for the power to come back. During the 3 hours of power supply, I baked this extremely easy and delicious paneer cake. The challenging part was waiting for 3 hours before tasting it

According to Wiki, this dessert was prepared ‘accidentally’.In the Orissan town of Nayagarh,a confectionery owner mixed sugar and seasoning to left over cottage cheese. He left this mixture inside an oven that was still warm. The next morning he was surprised to find this tasty dessert!

Now let us go to the recipe…

I used:
Recipe Source : Any One Can Cook

Fresh paneer – 200 grams
White rava / suji – 1 tablespoon
Powdered sugar – ½ cup
Raisins- a handful
Cashew nuts-a handful, broken into bits
Ghee – 1 tablespoon
Sugar- 2 tablespoons

1. Crumble paneer and add powdered sugar, suji.
2. Heat ghee in a small pan, and fry raisins till they puff up. Drain and add raisins to the paneer mixture.
3. Similarly fry the cashew till golden brown,drain and add to the mixture.Mix well.
4. In the same pan used to fry the raisins and cashew, add the sugar to the ghee. Heat it on medium till the sugar melts and turns golden brown. This is the caramel sauce.
5. Pour this immediately into the pan in which the cake is to be baked. Spread it evenly.
6. Pat the paneer mixture over the caramel sauce.
7. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 185 degrees for 20 minutes or till a tooth prick comes out clean.
8. Cool for 3 hours.Turn it upside down,cut and serve.

 Note :

• The original recipe uses cardamom powder for flavoring. I am not a huge fan of cardamom so I omitted it.
• As soon as the caramel is ready, it has to be poured into the pan, else it get difficult to spread. As a result, only certain part of the cake is topped with caramel.
• At the end of 20 minutes, the tooth prick came out clean but the cake was not ‘set’. After 3 hours, the texture was spongy.
• If you are using a loaf pan / cake pan, melt sugar and ghee over the stove top and then proceed. I used a disposable foil pan and hence prepared the caramel separately and then poured it into the foil pan.
• The instruction that comes with the recipe says this cake stays good for a week when refrigerated. 

I will be making this often. It is very simple and easy. It also tastes delicious. Isn’t this a great dessert!!!

Bon Appetit…