Besan Ladoos

Lacking an innate aptitude for making Indian sweets, I thought I need to start somewhere. I can't even make Rava Kesari for peanuts! After reading about besan ladus and making them twice, confidence is budding in this subject area. Although the taste is just fine, am not happy with their shape. For whatever reason they are not perfectly spherical. I tried rolling them into balls between my fingers, between the palms - nothing worked. Anyways, I like to use lesser sugar in making desserts and hence almost half the flour for sugar. Most folks do equal parts of flour and sugar I hear.

Besan/Gram flour – 2 cups                                          

Sugar – 1 cup

Ghee – ½ cup

Nuts – about 20 of them

Elaichi – 2

Dry roast the gram flour on lowest heat setting for about 15-20 min, keep stirring – else it burns. Patiently stir the besan, till the kitchen and maybe living areas fill up with the aroma of roasted besan. Set aside to cool down, remove away from the hot stove.

Add the sugar and elaichi into a blender and powder to confectioners’ sugar consistency i.e, a smooth powder.

With little kids who cannot bite nuts very well, I chose to run my roasted nut mix (almond, cashew, pistachios) through the blender. Blend it to a coarse mix, not powder.

Add the sugar mix and nut mix into the besan.

Melt the ghee and fold into besan.

With clean hands (duh!), mix the ingredients and make balls. Yummy ladoos ready.