Indian desserts

[Guest nimki]

Hi Monica

There are some old fashioned sweets made w/o milk. I dont know if these are popular even today but I love 'em!

Shakkar Paare

Gur ke cheele (a sort of sweet besan pancake)

balushahi

toshe (im not certain that this IS the right name but they are small slightly pinkish rounds covered in a film of sugar crystals)

sitaphal halwa

[Guest nimki]

an addition to the above -

gur ke sev (they are like thick small sticks covered with gur. Im not suer but i think the base is made of maida....i could be wrong)

[Monica Bhide]

Hi Monica

There are some old fashioned sweets made w/o milk. I dont know if these are popular even today but I love 'em!

Shakkar Paare

Gur ke cheele (a sort of sweet besan pancake)

balushahi

toshe (im not certain that this IS the right name but they are small slightly pinkish rounds covered in a film of sugar crystals)

sitaphal halwa

Hi nimki - these should definately be more popular!

Do you know how to make Sitaphal Halwa? (Sitaphal is custard apple)

Tosha or Toshe -- almost like small candy are made from reduced milk..

[scott123]

I can see how someone might see a certain similarity between ghee and shortening, but for me, I wouldn't feed shortening to my worst enemy.  How about coconut oil? Depending on the item, that might be a pleasant substitution.

As muich as I am a fan of coconuts and coconut oil, I think that Indian sweets made with ghee taste better. Coconut oil will not add the same flavor of ghee.

I think you might have misunderstood my post. In my response to skchai I was recommending coconut oil as a better subsitute for ghee than shortening or shortening based products. Everyone would agree that buffalo or cow ghee is the top choice for desserts, but since ghee is dairy and this is a non dairy thread, alternatives are being discussed. Unless of course you are using the term "ghee" to refer to the shortening based vegetable ghee. Are you telling me that you prefer vegetable ghee to coconut oil?

[Peppertrail]

Peppertrail,

Sometime ago, I ate this sweet from Andhra called Boori. It was delicious. It was like a dumpling - sweet chana dal balls coated with urad dal batter and deep-fried until crunchy and golden brown. I'd love to have a recipe for that. Can't find it anywhere. Would jangiri be similar? Boori was the first urad dal sweet I ever ate and now I'm addicted.

Suman

Suman:

I found the recipe you were looking for. My Andhra friends call it Booralu. It can be made with both channa and mung dal. The only difference is with channa I use dark brown sugar or jaggery and with mung I use white sugar. Here is the recipe. I hope you enjoy it.

Ammini Ramachandran

Booralu

1 cup of mung dal

1 ½ cups of water

1 ¼ cup sugar

1 teaspoon of crushed cardamom

¼ teaspoon saffron

3 tablespoons of urad flour

10 tablespoons of rice flour

water for batter

5 cups of oil (I prefer canola) for frying

Wash and cook mung dal with 1 ½ cups of water over medium heat. Allow almost all of the water to evaporate. If using a pressure cooker it will take about ten minutes. Combine the cooked dal with sugar and mash thoroughly. Cook it for ten to twelve minutes at high power in a microwave oven (time will vary depending on the power of the oven). At this point it should be very thick in consistency. If cooking on stove top, stir continuously so that the dal will not stick to the skillet. Sprinkle cardamom and saffron on top and stir well. At this point the mixture will be soft. As it cools down it will thicken. Let it cool to room temperature. Refrigerate for cooling faster. After it has cooled down, shape into small balls. One cup of dal cooked with sugar should yield approximately 16 to 18 balls.

In a heavy bottomed skillet heat the oil to approximately 325° F. In a bowl, combine the urad flour and rice flour with just enough water to make a batter. The batter should have the consistency of pancake batter so that it will leave a coating on the dal balls. Slightly flatten the balls with your fingers, dip them in the batter and deep fry till they are golden brown and crunchy. Drain on paper towels and serve hot. If you like ghee, a nice way to serve is to make small hole in the center of booralu with a spoon and fill it with ½ teaspoon hot ghee.

[Pan]

Dodol and bebinca are both sweets that came to India (Goa, to be precise) in the early part of the Portuguese era. They're both made - in quite widely varying versions - across the whole swathe of former Portuguese Asian possessions. I'm totally unfamiliar with Timorense food, but it would be interesting to see if these two items made it that far.

Yes, it would.

Do you have any idea where these foodstuffs originated?

[rajsuman]

Suman:

Jangiri is not exactly like boori. I know I have a recipe for boori somewhere in my collection of recipes. I will look for it and post it in a day or two. I make it with sweet mung dal balls. Most of these sweets can be made with either channa or mung dal. In the meantime here is a recipe for jangiri. I hope you like it

Jangiri

Urad Dal Pretzels In Rose Flavored Sugar Syrup

Sweet jangiri flavored with the essence of fragrant rose petals is the favorite sweet in my family. What is amazing about this sweet is the fact that its basic ingredient is urad dal, the same old small, greyish white beans that make salty idlis and crispy dosas and add a nutty crunch to dishes when it is toasted in oil and added as a garnish.

2 cup urad dal

1/4 cup long grain rice

2 ½ cups of sugar

A few drops of orange food coloring or saffron

A few drops of rose essence

4 cups of ghee or butter flavored vegetable shortening for deep frying

Soak the rice and dal for an hour and grind into a very soft thick batter. In a heavy bottomed skillet combine the sugar with one cup of water and the food coloring and cook it over medium heat to one-string consistency syrup (230 to 240 degrees on a candy thermometer). Add the saffron/food coloring and rose essence and reduce the heat to very low and keep the syrup warm. In another heavy bottomed skillet over medium heat setting melt the shortening to approximately 325° F. Fill the batter in a large squeeze bottle or a pastry bag fitted with a 3/16th inch diameter plain tube. When the shortening is hot, slowly squeeze the batter into two layers of small rounds (similar to jilebi). Each jangiri should be about 2 to 3 inches wide. Fry them till they are golden brown, remove from the oil, drain, and transfer directly into the syrup. Turn the jangiri with a tong to coat evenly with the syrup. Remove from the syrup after two or three minutes and place in a platter. Repeat the process with the remaining batter. Always soak hot jangiri in warm syrup for good absorption.

Recipe Copyright © 2004 Ammini Ramachandran

Ammini,

You're so kind to give me the recipes. I visited your website today and found it ( and your work) impressive. I feel like making the Jangiri NOW. My grandma was from Kerala and would make this roasted coconut curry that was truly delicious. I've had the good fortune of eating food from Kerala all my life because no matter where I went, I'd always have one good friend from Kerala. It's only now in Dublin that I don't know any Malayalees.

Suman

[Jason Perlow]

What about those round, donut like things that are sort of soaked in a sweet syrup?

[BettyK]

What about those round, donut like things that are sort of soaked in a sweet syrup?

Gulab Jamun? They are full of milk.

[Milagai]

I've made gajar halwa, and

kheer of some kinds,

substituting soy milk for cow's milk.

It tastes very good.

Can hardly tell any difference after

you add all the sugar, cardamom, etc etc.

I haven't tried tofu-chenna or soy-based gulab jamuns though.

Milagai

[jschyun]

What kind of soy milk did you use? I have tried making kheer with soy millk and it tasted awful, even though I like soy milk and I put in a lot of cardomam, pistachios and sugar to mask the taste.

Part of the appeal of kheer for me is that ultra milky taste, but I pay for it later.

[Jason Perlow]

What about those round, donut like things that are sort of soaked in a sweet syrup?

Gulab Jamun? They are full of milk.

Yeah but in theory, you could make one with soymilk, no?

[rajsuman]

Hello Ammini,

Thank you once again for helping me finally end my search for the booralu recipe. I'm much obliged.

Suman

[Vikram]

There are lots of Indian sweets that don't use milk, particularly in South India. I'd go so far as to say that Malayali sweets that use milk like pal-payasam are almost the exception (though many others do use a little ghee at some point). There is a really long list of sweets that aren't much known outside Kerala, not least because there isn't a community of sweetmeat makers to make and disseminate them. They come in all forms - custard like, porridge like, cake like and, my favourites, a whole range of small biscuit like things.

The best known of these are probably achappams or rose cookies, which are lovely to look at and not hard to make, but you do need a special mould which is used to dip into the batter and put it in the hot oil. I googled for a pic of the mould, but can't find one - its like a flower shaped design made from metal which is attached to a long handle. You dip it in the batter, put it in the oil and the achappam crisps up and floats loose. They look really nice and I've often thought they would be the ideal cheap extra to serve along with a restaurant's bill at the end.

My favourite though is something called pottiyappam in my family, though I think a more common name is 'diamond cuts'. This is a stiff, very slightly salty batter with lots of sesame and black cumin seeds that is rolled out, cut into diamond shapes and deep fried and then quickly dunked into sugar syrup and left to dry hard. The contrast between the salty, sweet and nutty sesame flavours is awesome - and makes them frighteningly easy to eat all at one go!

These are the two I'm really familiar with, but there are many others described in recipe books which seem vaguely familiar. Mrs. Mathew's book lists unniappams, which are sort of banana dumplings, which I've had and are OK. Jackfruit elayappam is steamed in leaves and sounds great, though jackfruit is a taste I am never entirely sure whether I like or not. Vatteappam I've never had and it sounds interesting - a coconut flavoured cake raised with yeast. Ethekka appams or banana fritters were a favourite teatime snack for my grandfather.

Ummi Abdulla's book on Malayali Muslim cooking lists lots of sweets made without milk and I am kicking myself I never took her up on an offer to eat at her place when she was living in Madras (she's now retired to Calicut). There's thariyappam (semolina pancakes), kalathappam (rice cakes), pinnanathappam (made with egg whites), kadalakkapam (made with chickpeas), and many more. In general they all revolve around coconuts, bananas and eggs.

One sweet she doesn't list, but which I did have at home was puran poli in the south Indian version, which is like a thick paratha filled with besan (chickpea flour) paste. I didn't much like this, so didn't investigate them and it was only years later I realised there were very different and vastly better types of puran poli. There's the Parsi type which is thick and cake like and filled with dried fruits as well. There's the Gujarati type, small and rich and laden with ghee.

Best of all is the Maharashtrian kind which is like a large, very delicate and dry chapatti filled with crumbly dry sweet besan. They are apparently very difficult to make which is why many housewives don't make them themselves, but get them from ladies organisations which specialise in making them. The reason they are so dry is because they are meant to be soaked in a cup of milk and then eaten. At the end, you're left with a residue of milk soaked sweet besan at the bottom of the cup, which is eaten by itself. Bliss!!!!

Though by now I realise we're very far from the milkless desserts query this started off with. I think if someone really wants to do milkless Indian desserts their best bet might be to try these Malayali recipes.

Vikram

[Vikram]

think there are three main categories. Other than what's already been covered:

Besan-based: In addition to Besan ki Laddu, Jalebis - made with water in batter, not curd, Mysore Pak.

Rice+Jaggery based, as baque25 mentioned. Pongal is another example.

Sweet "breads" - imartis, sweet idli and vadai.

Halva and halva-like: gajar halva probably doesn't count as it traditionally contains khoya, but e.g. halva made from petha

O.K, four main categories. Five?

Anil Kishore Sinha's "Anthropology of Sweetmeats" tries to do a classification of Indian sweets, in fact it does multiple classifications based on different criteria and at the end of it, it all seems almost as confused as when it started. But here briefly are the parameters he looks at:

- According to colour of sweetmeats (just giving a couple of the examples he lists in each case) - White (rossogulla), Red (gulab jamin, raskadam, belgrami), Black (kala jamun), Green (barfis), Yellow (bundi laddu), Brown (balushahi), Saffron (kesar peda), mixed colour (those lurid tiranga or tricolor barfis we'd see around Republic and Independence Days).

- According to milk - distinguishing beween sweets made with cow and buffalo milk

- According to contents - plain (rossogulla), stuffed (kheer kadam), sandwiched (cream chop), cream covered (manohara), made from vegetables (morabbas)

- According to syrup (meaning the form the syrup takes) - sweetmeats in syrup (rossogulla), sweetmeats soaked in syrup but not presented in it (jalebis), dry (meaning the syrup crystalises outside the sweet, as with shakarpala), syrup in the core (belgrami).

- According to sweetening agent - sugar, dry fruits, jaggery, artificial sweeteners.

- According to shape - round, disk, triangle, on a paper dish, small pieces, square, egg shaped, parallelogram, moulded, barrel shaped, amorphous

- According to size - this is a bit weird. He talks of rossogollas that are upto 200 gms, which sound more like a gimmick than anything that would be fun to eat.

- According to basic ingredient of sweetmeat - this is on the lines of what SKChai suggests, though he doesn't mention besan, but he does mention bhang!

Vikram

[Guest nimki]

monica

i was introduced to Sitaphal halwa at an aunts home. if i remember correctly, it was cooked in a syrup and not with milk. i didn't go for seconds because it was ugh! (absolutely my taste...though i can see the sitaphal brigade up in arms!)

btw it would seem from the previous post that i adore this dish....not true.

A similar dish is doodhi ka halwa .....an equally uninspiring sweet.

could it be that these recipes were adapted from those that did use milk?

regarding toshe - i think we may be talking about two different things here. the sweet i am referring to is not milky in taste...certainly not reduced milk at any rate. maybe i have the name wrong...will find out and post.

does fruti salad/chaat count? what about murabbas?

[skchai]

Dodol and bebinca are both sweets that came to India (Goa, to be precise) in the early part of the Portuguese era. They're both made - in quite widely varying versions - across the whole swathe of former Portuguese Asian possessions. I'm totally unfamiliar with Timorense food, but it would be interesting to see if these two items made it that far.

Yes, it would.

Do you have any idea where these foodstuffs originated?

Both are available on Timor. Dodol is widely available even in parts of Indonesia that were not under Portuguese rule.

Regarding bebinca, we had an earlier thread in the Spain/Portugal forum about its origins. The thread contains links to books, recipes, etc., and compares Goan and Timorese bebinca with Macanese bebinca de leite and Filipino bibingka.

bebinca / bibingka, Any idea about its origin?

[skchai]

Anil Kishore Sinha's "Anthropology of Sweetmeats" tries to do a classification of Indian sweets, in fact it does multiple classifications based on different criteria and at the end of it, it all seems almost as confused as when it started. But here briefly are the parameters he looks at . . .

- According to colour of sweetmeats (just giving a couple of the examples he lists in each case) - White (rossogulla), Red (gulab jamin, raskadam, belgrami), Black (kala jamun), Green (barfis), Yellow (bundi laddu), Brown (balushahi), Saffron (kesar peda), mixed colour (those lurid tiranga or tricolor barfis we'd see around Republic and Independence Days).

- According to milk - distinguishing beween sweets made with cow and buffalo milk

- According to contents - plain (rossogulla), stuffed (kheer kadam), sandwiched (cream chop), cream covered (manohara), made from vegetables (morabbas)

- According to syrup (meaning the form the syrup takes) - sweetmeats in syrup (rossogulla), sweetmeats soaked in syrup but not presented in it (jalebis), dry (meaning the syrup crystalises outside the sweet, as with shakarpala), syrup in the core (belgrami).

- According to sweetening agent - sugar, dry fruits, jaggery, artificial sweeteners.

- According to shape - round, disk, triangle, on a paper dish, small pieces, square, egg shaped, parallelogram, moulded, barrel shaped, amorphous

- According to size - this is a bit weird. He talks of rossogollas that are upto 200 gms, which sound more like a gimmick than anything that would be fun to eat.

- According to basic ingredient of sweetmeat - this is on the lines of what SKChai suggests, though he doesn't mention besan, but he does mention bhang!

Vikram

Thanks for the reference and summary, Vikram! I will try to get hold of a copy of the book. As a social scientist, I should know better than to venture off into the scary world of classifying things!

[scott123]

What about those round, donut like things that are sort of soaked in a sweet syrup?

Gulab Jamun? They are full of milk.

Yeah but in theory, you could make one with soymilk, no?

Gulab Jamon are made with khoya, which is more than just milk, it is milk that's been boiled down to a semi-solid state. It's just a guess, but I think soy milk may not be all that palatable reduced that far. Soft tofu, on the other hand, might give you interesting results.

[Episure]

One that has been missed out is the ubiquitous Kaju Katri which is made from Cashewnut paste, sugar and flavouring agents. I find it highly overrated and can't imagine how it's become so popular, give me roasted Cashewnuts any day.

[Monica Bhide]

Nice Vikram. I would love to get a hold of that work -- there are no coincidences as they say.. a friend was telling me about the very breakdown of sweets a few days ago. perhpas he had read this work as well.

[Monica Bhide]

One that has been missed out is the ubiquitous Kaju Katri which is made from Cashewnut paste, sugar and flavouring agents. I find it highly overrated and can't imagine how it's become so popular, give me roasted Cashewnuts any day.

I love this dessert. Not only do we make it often but you can now buy some fairly decent Kaju Katri here in the DC area and ofcourse in NYC

[Monica Bhide]

monica

i was introduced to Sitaphal halwa at an aunts home. if i remember correctly, it was cooked in a syrup and not with milk. i didn't go for seconds because it was ugh! (absolutely my taste...though i can see the sitaphal brigade up in arms!)

btw it would seem from the previous post that i adore this dish....not true.

A similar dish is doodhi ka halwa .....an equally uninspiring sweet.

could it be that these recipes were adapted from those that did use milk?

regarding toshe - i think we may be talking about two different things here. the sweet i am referring to is not milky in taste...certainly not reduced milk at any rate. maybe i have the name wrong...will find out and post.

does fruti salad/chaat count? what about murabbas?

We probably are. the ones i know are small and pale creamish in color and coated with what appears to be powdered sugar. They are made with khoya or reduced milk.

Murrabas- I have a book from my great grandmother that has age old recipes of these. maye I wil try a few and then post them

[Guest nimki]

<<<<We probably are. the ones i know are small and pale creamish in color and coated with what appears to be powdered sugar. They are made with khoya or reduced milk.>>>>

-----------> could this be chaina murkhi you are referring to?

served at festive occasions/weddings/to guests etc?

[Monica Bhide]

<<<<We probably are. the ones i know are small and pale creamish in color and coated with what appears to be powdered sugar. They are made with khoya or reduced milk.>>>>

-----------> could this be chaina murkhi you are referring to?

served at festive occasions/weddings/to guests etc?

nope. that is different. this one is a bit more crunchy and the color is different.