Bhapa Doi or Steamed Yoghurt (Better than Cheese Cake!)

Wish you all a very Happy Deepawali! May the festival of lights dispel darkness and ignorance and bring all things bright and wonderful your way this year!

Fireworks over Sydney Harbour Bridge

This year we wanted to make a simple sweet dish of Deepawali, but also something new which we haven’t tried before. Although as a family we are mostly off sugar, we wanted to ensure Dib’s little daughter learns to celebrate Deepawali with all traditions intact! She is fussy about food, and surprisingly doesn’t have an affinity for sweets. She loves her cheese though, and so we were thinking of a dish that she can enjoy as well. We promptly zeroed on ‘Bhapa Doi’ or ‘Steamed Curd’ from the Bengali cuisine. It looked easy enough to make as well.We tried it for the first time. It is surprisingly easy to make and tastes amazing. It‘s texture is like cheese cake, and in fact tastes far better than cheese cake without its dry biscuit crust! Weare thinking of adding fruit pulp the next time we make it!

INGREDIENTS:

Ingredients

Greek Yogurt- ½ kilo (If you don’t have greek yoghurt, hang curd in a muslin cloth and allow all the water to drip off (at least 2 – 3 hours)Sweetened Condensed milk – 1 tin

Milk – 2 tbsps

Saffron strands – a generous pinch
Dry roasted whole cardamoms – a few

METHOD:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.

2. Fill your kettle and put it on to boil.

3. Blend yogurt and condensed milk together, using a hand blender or whisk.

Whisk yoghurt and condensed milk.

4. Pour it into a bake proof bowl. We poured it into small ramekins and we got about 6.

5. The ramekins need to be cooked in a Water Bath. To create a water bath, place the ramekins in a large baking tray (we used a foil tray), and place in the oven. Very carefully fill with hot water upto ¾ height of the ramekins. Be careful not to burn your hands, or spill water in the Doi!

Water Bath in the Oven

6. In the meanwhile soak the saffron strands in warm milk.

7. After 25 minutes, open the oven carefully and top the contents of each bowl with a little soaked saffron milk, and place one cardamom on top. Breaking the pod a little, but without removing the seeds helps in releasing flavours.

8. Again bake for ten minutes.

9. Remove from the oven, cover with cling film and chill for few hours,( but best results are to chill overnight) before serving.