India’s Ras Malai ranks no.2 in the list of ’10 Best Cheese Desserts’ in the World

India’s Ras Malai ranks no.2 in the list of ’10 Best Cheese Desserts’ in the World

Mangalore Today News Network/NDTV

March 16, 2024: Cheese desserts are often rich, soft and melt-in-mouth in texture. These are not just limited to blueberry and chocolate cheesecakes -- there are all kinds of cheese desserts across the world, prepared using different types of cheese and other ingredients. Recently, popular food guide Taste Atlas unveiled its list of the ’10 Best Cheese Desserts’ in the world. The first position was bagged by Sernik from Poland, followed by Ras malai from India in the second position. Read on to learn more about these delicious cheese desserts.

 

Sernik from Poland is a cheesecake made with eggs, sugar and twarog, which is a type of curd cheese. This cheesecake is usually made on a layer of crumbly cake and can be either baked or unbaked. As per Taste Atlas, one of the most popular varieties of Sernik has a sponge cake as its base and is covered with jelly and fruit on top.

Coming to the cheese dessert on the second spot, Ras malai is a popular Indian sweet of West Bengali origins. ’Ras’ means juice and ’malai’ means cream. This sweet and spongy dessert is prepared using soft fresh cheese called ’chhena’, which is made using milk, lemon juice and water. The chhena is then cooked in sugar syrup and soaked in ’rabdi’, a cardamom-flavoured sweet milk syrup which also has chopped almonds and pistachios. Ras malai is best served chilled. This dessert is popularly enjoyed during festivals such as Holi and Diwali.  

The list of ’10 Best Cheese Desserts’ in the world also features other popular cheese desserts such as New York-style cheesecake, Japanese cheesecake and Basque cheesecake. 

Here is the complete list:

1. Sernik, Poland
2. Ras malai, India
3. Sfakianopita, Greece
4. New York-style cheesecake, USA
5. Japanese cheesecake, Japan
6. Basque cheesecake, Spain
7. Rakoczi turos, Hungary
8. Melopita, Greece
9. Kasekuchen, Germany
10. Misa rezy, Czech Republic