Sweet

JALEBI

 Ingredients:

·        2 cups Maida [refined flour]

·        ½ tsp. baking powder

·        Ghee for frying

·        2 cups of sugar

·        A  big pinch saffron soaked in warm water or 4 drops of yellow color

·        1 tsp. cardamom, coarsely powdered.

Method:

Mix Maida with baking powder and water to make a batter of the consistency of thick cream. Put it aside in a warm place to ferment for 24 hours.

Dissolve 2 cups of sugar in 2 cups of water and boil till it becomes thick. Squeeze out 2 to 3 drops of the lime. Then lot of scum will collect on its surface. Remove it with a spoon So that the syrup becomes crystal clear. Add saffron soaked in warm water. See that the syrup is of one thread consistency. Add cardamom powder bring to one boil and remove from fire.

Now beat the previously prepared batter for few minutes and 

now heat ghee in a heavy bottomed wide frying pan and lower the heat.

Fill some batter in the thick square cloth, in which a small hole is made in the center. Gather the 4 ends of the cloth to make it in to a bag-type bundle.

Holds it right over the ghee in the pan and by pressing the bundle lightly move it in a circular motion. Thus drop 4 or 5 jalebis in the ghee. It depends on the size of your frying pan you use. When fried well in one side in light golden color turn the other side and fry like the same. Lift them on a steel knitting needle and hold over the pan for a while so that all the extra ghee drips down. Put them directly in the sugar syrup to soak. After 3 or 4 minutes, take them out of the syrup and drain and keep in a plate and serve hot.

MYSORE PAK

Ingredients
Besan (chick-pea flour) 1 cup
Sugar 1 1/2 cups
Ghee 2 cups
Water 1 3/4 cups

Procedure
1.Dissolve the sugar in the water and heat it.
2.Keep stirring till you get a thread consistency.
3.You can check for this by feeling the syrup between your fore-finger and thumb. (If the syrup has reached the required consistency, then you will able to pull it out like a thread).
4.Remove all the lumps in the chick-pea flour and add it to the syrup, 1 table spoon at a time.
5.Reduce the heat and add 2 teaspoons of ghee.
6.Stir, till the flour and ghee has completely blended with the syrup.
7.Repeat procedure 2 till you finish all of the besan.
8.Continue to stir and keep adding ghee 1tsp. at a time till the mixture changes color and texture. At one point, you will observe that the mixture is not able to absorb any more ghee. Also, the whole mixture becomes porous and starts leaving the edges of the vessel.
9.At this point, transfer the mixture into a greased plate and with a spatula press the mixture down till the excess ghee surfaces. Do not remove the excess ghee.
10.Allow it to cool for 10 minutes. Then, cut it into desired shape and wait for another 10 minutes. Carefully remove each piece and arrange on the serving tray.