Mishti Doi, a Bengali sweet delicacy of sweetened yogurt. Ever since I read about the mishti doi from the article series of "Rushial" written by writer Para(P.Raghavan) in his blog, I wanted to make them so bad.
In that article, he wrote about his experience of buying the mishti doi at bengal street around midnight and had it along with naga jolokia(hottest chili grown somewhere near Assam) pickle. The whole experience was narrated in a hilariously manner, if you can read tamil, check out here and here about his experience.
Traditionally the mishi doi is prepared with palm jaggery/palm candy crystals instead of sugar. In para's blog, he mentioned that palm candy crystals(panam karkandu) are used in the mishti doi. In many other blogs it says that palm jaggery(karuppati) is used for making mishti doi but in the pictures it looks like palm candy crystals.
So i got confused which one to use, but went with palm sugar crystals, since usually palm jaggery has lot of impurities and always i prefer to make syrup with that and filter it once before use, here in mishti doi, i don't want to dilute the milk with jaggery syrup, thicker the milk, creamier the mishti doi would be.
After we moved to MI, it's really hard for me to get back to blogging, even though our things arrived two weeks before, for the past 10 days each day I told myself all the lame excuses for not doing anything!
The past two days posts were from the drafts, so for today's post i have to cook something, that's when this mishti doi came to my mind, so two days back i made this mishti doi, glad i tried it, it was so creamy and tasty, even before taking the pictures, the one bowl of mishti doi was gone, now you knew how delicious it is.
Mishti Doi
Preparation Time : 1 day | Cooking Time : 15 mins | Serves : 2
Recipe Category: Sweet | Recipe Cuisine: Indian
Recipe Category: Sweet | Recipe Cuisine: Indian
Ingredients
Milk - 3 cup
Palm Jaggery - 1/2 cup
Cardamom Powder - 1/8 tsp
Curd - 1 tbsp
Milk - 3 cup
Palm Jaggery - 1/2 cup
Cardamom Powder - 1/8 tsp
Curd - 1 tbsp
Add the milk in the wide kadai and let it bring to boil, then simmer the milk until it reduces to 2 cups.

In between scrap the sides of the kadai and add it into the boiling milk and also stir frequently to avoid burning at the bottom. Once the milk is reduced to almost 2 cups, switch off the flame.

Immediately add the palm jaggery and mix it well with the milk, the residual heat from the milk is enough to dissolve the sugar completely.

Then add the cardamom powder, mix it well and transfer to the another bowl(it helps to cool down the milk quickly). Take the curd in a small bowl and whisk it smooth without any lumps.

Once the milk comes to warm temperature(if you dip your finger in the milk, it should be comfortably warm neither too hot nor too cold) add the curd and mix it well. Pour it into the individual earthern pot/terracotta bowl or even you can set it in the same bowl. Keep it in the kitchen counter until it sets. Unlike regular curd, it takes really long time to set. Mine takes approximately 24hrs to set.

Once it sets, cover it with cling wrap and let it refrigerate for at least 4 hrs. Tasty and creamy Mishti Doi is ready.
Related : How to make Begali Rasgulla
Notes:- If you want mild sweetness, than just add 1/3 cup of palm jaggery only.
- As i said earlier, it takes long time to set. Approximately 24-28 hrs when the room temperature is around 75 F.
- Earthern pot works great for this mishti doi to set. Since the porous nature of the pot absorbs all the liquid (if any left) and gives you super creamy mishti doi.
- For photo sake, i have added few saffrons on top, but that's not required.