Chanar Jilipi is a unique Bengali sweet from West Bengal made with fresh cow’s milk paneer mixed with semolina and flour. It is interestingly shaped into a ‘figure 8 knot’ followed by deep frying and soaking in a simple syrup. This is a popular Bengali mishti and you will always find it on the shelves of Bengali mishtir-dokan.
Like most Bengali sweet recipes, freshly churned soft chana is the key to this recipe. All it needs is some time and patience to get every step right. That’s why I have tried to share a detailed recipe with step-by-step process shots and a recipe video so that you can make chanar jilipi easily at home.

If you haven’t tried this mishti then it is somewhat like Pantua or Bengali Gulab Jamun (which is also made out of chena or chenna) in terms of its taste and texture, and because of its shape, it got the name jilipi.
Social media has made this mishti quite popular but some of them have mistakenly started calling it Paneer Jalebi. While the star ingredient is paneer in both the sweet dishes, however, paneer jalebi, which is hugely popular in north India is orange-coloured crispy sweet while the chanar jilipi is brown and soft. Apart from the appearance, both sweets differ in terms of texture, taste and preparation process.
This is a small batch chanar jilipi recipe that gives around 10 pieces. So, if you want to make a bigger batch of it for entertaining guests, or you want to keep a few of these handy for those late-night cravings, just double the recipe.
Chanar jilipi recipe ingredients
- Cow Milk
- Lemon Juice – alternate would be White Vinegar
- All-Purpose Flour or Maida
- Semolina or Sooji
- Baking Soda
- Milk
- Ghee or Clarified Butter
- Sugar & Water to make the Sugar Syrup
- Green Cardamom pods to add flavour to the Sugar Syrup
Chanar jilipi mishti recipe instructions
Making homemade chana
- All you need is some good quality full-fat milk and a milk curdling agent such as lemon juice or white vinegar.
- Bring the milk to a rolling boil first. Once it is there, add the juice of a lemon to the milk. Here, I have used 600ml of Cow’s Milk and that required the juice of one golf ball-sized lemon. Add the juice gradually. Once you see that the cheese has curdled and the whey left underneath is pale green, stop adding the juice.
- Turn off the heat. Take a cheesecloth and lay it on top of a sieve. Now, pour the contents of the milk pan into it. I would suggest you collect the whey underneath the sieve, as it is rich in nutrients. You can use it to knead the dough for chapattis or flour tortillas.
- Gather the ends of the cheesecloth and let it sit on the sieve overnight to get rid of the moisture. If you live in a colder region, you may leave it on your kitchen counter, otherwise, keep it in the refrigerator.
Making the chanar jilipi mishti

- Take the chena or cottage cheese in a mixing bowl and knead it for 8-10 minutes to make it smooth and supple
- Add the rest of the ingredients in it like All-Purpose Flour, Semolina and Baking Soda and knead it again

- Add Milk to make the dough moist and pliable to form the shape of Chanar Jilipi. it should be kind of a sticky dough as shown here. It took somewhere around 4 tablespoons of milk to get the perfect dough.
- Add a teaspoon of Ghee to help you work with the dough

- Divide the dough into 10 equal portions. Take each portion and roll it long on your kitchen counter
- Once it is somewhere around 7 cm, take the ends and bring them together at the centre. Pinch the ends tightly so that they do not unfurl while frying

- & 8. Now, fry them in oil/ghee on very low heat. Once they turn brown, take them out and dunk them in Sugar Syrup. Let them soak for an hour or so before serving.
More Bengali mishti recipes





- Nikuti Recipe
- Instant Malpoa recipe
- Khaja or Chiroti
- Pranhara Sandesh
- Balushahi
- Narkel Naru or Coconut Jaggery Ladoo
- Instant Kalakand recipe using Condensed Milk
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Chanar Jilipi is a very popular Bengali Sweet from India's eastern state of West Bengal. Chanar Jilipi is an Indian sweetmeat made with fresh cottage cheese of cow's milk mixed with semolina and flour, shaped into a 'figure 8 knot' followed by deep frying and soaking in a simple syrup. This is a very popular Bengali sweet dish and can be found at most of the sweet shops selling Indian sweets or Mithai.
- 600 ml Cow's Milk
- 1 Lemon
- 2 tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 1 tbsp Semolina or Sooji
- ½ tsp Baking Soda
- 4 tbsp Milk
- 1 tsp Ghee
- Ghee or Oil to fry
- 1 cup Sugar
- 1 cup Water
- 1 Green Cardamom Pod
-
Bring the milk to a rolling boil first. Once it is there, add the juice of a lemon into the milk. Here, I have used 600ml of Cow's Milk and that required the juice of one golf ball-sized lemon. Add the juice gradually. Once you see that the cheese has curdled and whey left underneath is pale green in colour, stop adding the juice.
-
Turn off the heat. Take a cheesecloth and lay it on top of a sieve. Now, pour the contents of the milk pan into it. I would suggest you collect the whey underneath the sieve, as it is rich in nutrients.
-
Gather the ends of the cheesecloth and let it sit on the sieve overnight to get rid of the moisture. If you live in a colder region, you may leave it on your kitchen counter, otherwise, keep it in the refrigerator.
-
ake sugar and water in a sauce pan and gently bring it to a boil. Keep stirring so that the sugar is dissolved completely. Once you see that there are no more sugar crystals left, switch off the heat. Drop in the cardamom pods and stir.
-
Take the chena or cottage cheese in a mixing bowl and knead it for 8-10 minutes to make it smooth and supple
-
Add the rest of the ingredients in it like All-Purpose Flour, Semolina and Baking Soda and knead it again
-
Add Milk to make the dough moist and pliable to form the shape of Chanar Jilipi. it should be kind of a sticky dough as shown here. It took somewhere around 4 tablespoons of milk to get the perfect dough.
-
Add a teaspoon of Ghee to help you work with the dough
-
Divide the dough into 10 equal portions. Take each portion and roll it long on your kitchen counter
-
Once it is somewhere around 7cms, take the ends and bring them together at the centre. Pinch the ends tightly so that they do not unfurl while frying
-
Now, fry them in oil/ghee on very low heat. Once they turn brown, take them out and dunk them in Sugar Syrup. Let them soak for an hour or so before serving.
Recipe Video
This post was first published on April 23, 2020, and later republished with a more elaborate description of the recipe.
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