Besan Ladoo
Besan Ladoo is a quintessential for our Diwali Festival. They are prepared with gram flour made from ground chickpea. For sweetness, sugar is added along with dry fruits like raisins, almonds or cashews and flavoured with cardamom powder.
Ingredients
- 2 cups gram flour
- 0.5 cup powdered sugar
- 0.5 cup ghee + 2 tbsp
- 2 tsp cardamom powder
- raisins handful
Instructions
- Heat 1/2 cup of ghee in a thick pan over a medium heat.
- Once ghee is melted, turn heat to low and add sifted gram flour into it. If there are still any lumps, break them immediately.
- Roast gram flour on low heat while stirring continuously.
- Keep roasting on low heat. Do not get tempted to turn heat high, it might burn the flour.
- After 10-15 minutes gram flour starts releasing the aroma. Keep roasting while stirring continuously.
- After some time flour starts changing the colour.
- If flour is still dry then add remaining 2 tbsp of ghee into the pan.
- Continue roasting on low heat. After 30-35 minutes, flour will be smooth, aromatic and starts coming together. I generally roast the flour around 40-45 minutes.
- Flour should neither be dry like powder nor thin as liquid; it should be semi-thick consistency.
- Once properly roasted, transfer the flour to another plate or bowl.
- Allow roasted flour to cool down at room temperature.
- Meanwhile, roast raisins on low heat in little ghee. Just a quick roast, for couple of minutes or so.
- Once gram flour is completely cool down, add powdered sugar, raisins and cardamom powder into it.
- Gently mix everything together to form a lump free smooth mixture. Mixture is semi thick and little greasy, at this stage.
- Once our mixture is ready, roll it into big lime sized balls. With this proportion, you can make approximately 10-12 ladoo’s.
- Let ladoo rest overnight on a plate with some distance apart. They will hold a proper shape and won’t stick to each other. Then you can transfer them into air tight jar.
- Our Besan Ladoo is ready, you can keep them at room temperature. They should stay good for almost 3-4 weeks if stored in a dry, airtight jar.
Notes
- Roasting is an important step. If gram flour is not properly roasted, then it will tastes like a raw powder and ruin the ladoo.
- Add sugar once roasted flour completely cooled down, else sugar will melt due to heat. Thus we won't be able to roll the mixture into ladoo.
- I have used only raisins but feel free to add melon seeds, almonds, cashews or pistachios.
- Always use fine powdered sugar, granular sugar will ruin the smooth texture of ladoo.