Take the readymade gulab jamun mix powder in a sieve.

Sieve the powder into a mixing bowl by breaking the small lumps using your fingers. In fact, there is nothing to discard and our aim for sieving is to get fluffy flour without lumps.

Now add the milk (boiled and chilled) gradually and start mixing. If you don't prefer milk you can just add water and mix.

Make a sticky dough by kneading gently. Please note that the dough should be slightly wet and sticky without any dry flour.

Cover with a lid and keep it for resting for 15 minutes aside. This resting time helps to keep the dough soft.

After 15 minutes, grease your palms with ghee, scoop a small portion of the dough and roll gently. Keep rolling with palms until you get crack free smooth jamun ball.

Make all the balls, cover and keep aside.

Take an equal amount of sugar and water in a pan and heat.

For MTR gulab jamun mix, the outer cover says, for 175g mix 800g of sugar is required. I used 3 cups(approx.700g) sugar and an equal amount of water.

Cook the syrup until it becomes boiling, also add saffron strands and cardamom powder.

Saffron gives a nice golden color to the syrup while heated up.

Cook sugar syrup until it becomes slightly thick and sticky. No need to make any string consistency.

Check the stickiness with fingers and switch off. If you cook beyond this point until single string consistency, jamun balls will get an outer sugar crystal coating instead of glassy syrup coating. See the tips section if you overcooked the syrup.

Keep aside this until we fry the jamuns.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a deep frying pan/pot with some ghee for flavor. You can omit ghee if you wish and use only oil.

Heat the oil to medium-hot temperature.

Check the temperature with a small portion of dough. The dough should raise slowly without burning.

Now drop the balls slowly in oil and reduce the heat to medium temperature.

Do not crowd the kadai and allow space for the balls to get fried. While frying the enlarge in size.

Fry all the jamuns in the same manner and keep aside.

Soak the hot jamuns with hot sugar syrup. The sugar syrup should not be very hot at the same time should not be cold.

If the syrup is too hot the balls may crack while soaking and if syrup is of room temperature then the core portion of the jamun balls will not get sweet.

Leave the jamuns in the syrup for atleast an hour to three hours before serving.

Garnish with pistachios or almond flakes and serve the gulab jamuns warm or with ice cream.