Here’s How You Can Cook Your Favourite Diwali Sweets

Try making these sweets this Diwali!

(This story was first published on 14 October 2017 and is being republished from The Quint's archives on the occasion of Diwali 2022.)

What’s Diwali without sweets? Without having some quintessential Indian desserts, one’s Diwali cannot be complete.

Here’s how you can cook your favourite mithai!

Besan (gram flour) Laddoos

Time Taken: 1 hour

Ingredients:

• 3/4 cups sugar

• 200 gms besan

• 1/2 cup desi ghee

• 1/4 tsp green cardamom

• Almonds and pistachios - handful

Method:

1. Mix the besan and gram flour together in a kadhai, and cook it for about thirty minutes over low heat, till it turns into a light brown thick paste.

2. Let it cool completely. If you add sugar before it’s cooled, it becomes soggy.

3. The next step is to add the sugar and cardamom, The sugar has to blend well.

4. Now shape the mixture into tight, hard balls.

5. Garnish with almonds and pistachios.

Shakkar Pare

Ingredients:

• Maida - 200 grams
• Ghee - 50 grams
• Sugar - 200 grams

Method:

1. Sieve the flour, put ghee into the mixture and mix properly
2. Keep the dough a bit hard. Cover for 20 minutes so it can ferment.
3. Divide dough into two parts. Take one part and make it into a 1/4 cm thick poori with a rolling pin. Cut it with a knife and leave out 1/2 inch gaps, making similar cuts from the other side. Shape into square shakkar pare.
4. Fry shakkar pare in ghee till they are golden brown.
5. Add sugar in a pan and add 1/2 a cup of water. Let sugar dissolve completely
6. Use it as a chashni

Rasgulla

Ingredients:

• 4 cups milk
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 1/2 cups water
• Pressure cooker

Method:

1. In half a cup of hot water, add lemon juice and keep aside.
2. Boil the milk on medium heat, and keep mixing.
3. Just as the milk is boiling, add the lemon juice and stir the milk gently.
4. Just as the milk fat is separating from the whey, drain the whey with a cheesecloth.
5. Wrap the curd in muslin, rinse and squeeze it.
6. To take out the excess water keep it pressed under a heavy pan for an hour.
7. Knead the paneer for 3-4 minutes.
8. Divide the dough into small equal parts and roll them into smooth balls.
9. Make chashni, and add the paneer balls with it in a pressure cooker, and cook for seven minutes.
10. Serve chilled.

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