Boondi Laddu

Laddu is a well-known Indian sweet often prepared for festivals and also to celebrate important events like for weddings. Here we?re going to celebrate Christmas.

Ingredients:
250 Gram flour
60g Cashew nuts
20 dry grapes
3 tbsp Ghee
Ghee for deep frying (approximately 4 cups)

For SugarSyrup:
500g sugar
Water (1 cup)
1 tsp Saffron powder
Cardamom 10 pods
1 tsp rose water


Method:
Break the cashew nuts into two or into small pieces.
Fry on medium heat the grapes until they puff up in 3 tbsp of ghee. Add cashew nuts and fry until golden brown.

Sugar syrup:
Grind the cardamoms and filter the powder.
Add sugar and pour water (just enough to cover the sugar) in a double bottomed vessel and prepare the sugar syrup. Boil until you get a one-string consistency. Add the rose water, saffron powder and the cardamom powder. Keep it warm just aside the wok in which boondis are going to be fried.

Preparing the Boondi:
Add water to the sifted gram flour, so that you get a smooth batter (like the dosa batter consistency, it should be neither too thick nor too watery).

Heat ghee on medium flame, add the mixed batter through a boondi ladle by spreading the batter with a spoon or a spatula so that small drops of boondi falls in the ghee, like in the picture below.
We?re just going to wait half a minute approximately, just enough to puff up the boondis but we neither want to over- fry the boondis nor make them crispy.


When done, add remove the boondis with a slotted spatula and add in the warm sugar syrup. Continue for the rest of the batter.

When all is over, add the fried dry grapes and the cashew nuts to the above mixture and mix everything delicately.


Reserve it until the temperature of the mixture comes down to a bearable heat (or slightly hotter than warm) and start forming big balls with your hand by pressing them slightly. Anyway, try to make balls out of it!!!!! (we are going to do this before the temperature of the laddus come down or we?ll not be able to make balls)
Leave them to chill down completely.Happy Christmas to all of you!!!