Boondhi Laddu – Gram Flour Laddu

Laddu is an Indian sweet which is often prepared during festivals or any special occasions at home. You can also see Laddu at many temples kept as prasadham. There are different types of laddu such as Rava Laddu, Ragi laddu, Boondhi laddu, etc. I have given you the recipe for Boondhi Laddu. Here you go…

Ingredients:

• Besan/Gram flour – 1 cup
• Sugar – 1.5 cups
• Milk – 100 ml
• Cardamom – 3 numbers
• Whole Cashew nut – 5 numbers
• Raisins – 10 numbers
• Yellow food color
• Oil for frying
• Clarified butter – 1 tsp

Method of Preparation:

1. Heat a deep bottomed pan or kadai, add sugar and a little water till the sugar gets wet completely.
2. Once the sugar melts completely, add the milk.
3. Milk helps to get rid off any dirt in sugar. Skim the dirt off the syrup.
4. When the syrup starts thickening, take a few drops in your fore finger and check the texture with your thumb.
5. It should be sticky that you should be able to see strings (we call it “kambi padham” in tamil) between your fingers.
6. Now the syrup is ready. Remove from heat.
7. Add a pinch of lemon yellow color for the laddu to be in yellow colour.
8. Take a tsp of clarified butter in a small pan and add broken cashew nuts and raisins and fry till cashew becomes golden brown in color. Keep it aside.
9. Take besan or gram flour in a bowl and add water and mix it well till you get a free flowing batter like dosa batter.
10. In India we get a separate ladle for making boondhi. If you don’t have one you can use the steel skimming laddle which has the small holes perfect for making boondis.
11. Now heat oil in a deep bottomed pan or kadai.
12. Oil should be hot enough that as soon as you drop a drop of batter, it should come up with bubbles.
13. When oil is ready, keep the boondhi ladle or the steel skimming ladle above oil and pour a cup or required amount of batter in it.
14. Do not pour so much of batter because it needs space to get fried properly in oil.
15. You can see small beads of gram flour in oil with bubbles. This is called Boondhi.
16. Once the bubbles goes off, check the boondhi for its texture. It has to be soft and cooked.
17. Remove it using another skimming ladle before it becomes deep fried.
18. Strain the excess oil using a paper towel and put it immediately in the sugar syrup. It absorbs syrup only when the boondhi is hot.
19. Repeat the same procedure with the rest of the batter.
20. Every time mix the boondhi with the syrup well before dropping the next set of boondhis.
21. There should be no excess syrup in the mixture so that you will be able to make balls in good shape.
22. Finally add the powdered cardamom and fried cashews and raisins and mix well with the boondhi.
23. It will be a semi hard mixture.
24. Take a little amount of mixture and make boondhi balls out of it.
25. You need practice on this one. If you feel it is tough, you can make square shape laddu with the square cookie cutter.

🙂 Serve hot or at room temperature.