Parade of sweets: Diwali delicacies!

Satarupa Banerjee offers sweet recipes to celebrate the dazzling festival of lights.

Diwali is a time of puja. And love. We commit ourselves to constructing a better life.

It's also a time of great food and plenty of good eating.

Cooking up and sharing traditional sweets with family, friends and neighbours -- apart from feasting on them yourself -- is the culinary backbone of this happy festival.

The festival is drenched in sugar.

Spreading sweetness is as important as spreading light.

Try some of these traditional recipes! Diwali recipes need to be tried and mastered a few weeks before Diwali and they store well.

Mooger Borfi (Mung Dal Fudge)

Ingredients

• 250 gm moong dal
• 200 gm ghee
• 200 gm sugar
• 200 gm khoya (solid milk)
• 200 ml water
• 2 tbsps cashewnuts, broken
• 2 tbsps raisins
• 1 tsp rose water

Method

Soak moong dal for five to six hours. Drain and grind. But do not grind to a fine paste. It should be slightly granular like semolina. Heat ghee in a karahi. Fry cashews and raisins. Keep aside. Break khoya in tiny granules. Make sugar syrup of 2-string consistency with sugar and water. Fry dal paste in ghee over a slow fire till it starts leaving the sides of the karahi. Add khoya and cook till everything gets mixed well. Pour in the syrup and cook for a couple of minutes till it of a fudge-like consistency. Add rose water and pour on to a greased plate. Decorate with cashewnuts and raisins. When set, cut into squares or diamond-shaped pieces.

Aamer Burfi (Mango Fudge)

Ingredients

• Fresh paneer made from 1 litre of cow's milk
• 1 cup mango pulp
• 1 tsp green cardamom powder
• 150 gm sugar
• 1 cup cashewnut pieces
• A few drops of saffron colour

Method

Knead paneer until smooth..Put the mango pulp on medium fire in a karahi. Stir constantly till thick. Add sugar, green cardamom powder and the paneer. Stir well until the mixture becomes quite thick and leaves the sides of the karahi. Add saffron colour and cashew pieces. Spread mixture in a greased square tray. Cool and cut into pieces.

Excerpted from The Book of Indian Sweets by Satarupa Banerjee, published by Rupa and Co with the publishers' permission.

You need good quality flour for balushahis. These will keep for more than a week.

Ingredients

• 500 gm flour
• 100 gm ghee
• 200 gm thick fresh curd
• A pinch of baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 500 gm sugar
• Ghee for frying.

Method

Sieve the flour, baking powder and baking soda together. Cream the curd and 100 gm ghee together. Knead the flour with this mixture. Do not knead vigorously. Use a light hand. Keep the dough aside for one hour. Make a syrup with the sugar and 6 cups of water of 2-string consistency. Now, knead the dough lightly once. Divide into lime-sized lumps. Roll each lump into round balls. Press lightly and make a slight indentation with a fingertip, in the middle. Make all the other balushahis thus.

Heat ghee in a karahi for deep frying. Remove from the heat when hot. Put in six balushahis at a time. Splash ghee on them with a spoon. Place pan again on low heat. The balushahis will bloat in size.

Fry to a light biscuit colour. Take out with a slotted spoon. Hold the spoon against the rim of the karahi so that any extra ghee can drip off. Put the balushahis in the sugar syrup. Carefully stir them so that they are coated with the syrup.

When the balushahis have soaked in the syrup well, take out and keep aside to cool. When cold, the syrup will form a coating.

The curd used should be fresh, not sour. You may increase the amount of milk if you do not want to use condensed milk. Add 150 gm of sugar in that case.

Ingredients

• 1 litre milk
• 1 tin condensed milk
• 1 cup curd
• A little green cardamom powder

Method

Bring milk to a boil. Cool and add curd. Put on to boil. The mixture should curdle. If not, add a little lime juice. As soon as the milk starts curdling, add the condensed milk. Stir continuously. Stir well till the water evaporates and the mixture becomes a sticky mess. Remove from fire and spread cardamom powder. Mix well. When cool enough to handle, shape into balls. The sandesh will not be smooth but granular in texture.

No festival in India, particularly in the northern and central parts, is complete without motichoor laddoos.

Ingredients

• 1 kg gram flour
• 1 kg sugar
• A pinch of baking powder
• 1 cup milk
• A few drops of orange colour
• A few drops of saffron essence
• 2 tsps cardamom powder
• 2 tbsps finely chopped balanced almonds
• Ghee for frying

Method

Sieve gram flour and baking powder together. Mix in 2 tablespoons melted ghee, milk and enough water to make a thickish batter, say, like pakoda batter. Heat enough ghee in a karahi. Take a perforated spoon with tiny holes in it.When the ghee is smoking hot, hold the perforated spoon in one hand and rub some of the batter with the other so that the batter falls in tiny droplets. Tap the handle of the perforated spoon against the rim of the karahi to make the mixture fall through.

Fry till golden. Take the boondis out with another perforated ladle, resting it on the rim of the pan for a while, so that the extra ghee drips down to the karahi. Likewise, fry all the boondis. In the meanwhile, prepare a syrup of three-string consistency. Add colour and essence. Keep the syrup hot.

Put in the fried boondis directly in the syrup, also add the almonds and cardamom powder. Mix thoroughly. When tolerably cold, form into round balls with greased palms. These will be quite soft laddoos. If you want hard ones, cook the syrup till hard ball stage (a drop of syrup put into cold water forms a hard ball).

Mohanthaal (Maharashtrian Gram Flour Fudge)

This fudge from Maharashtra differs in taste and texture from the popular Mysore pak of South India.

Ingredients

• 1kg gram flour
• 1 kg ghee
• 1 litre milk
• 1 kg sugar
• 100 gm khoya
• 1 cup chopped nuts and raisins
• 1 tsp cardamom powder
• 1 tsp nutmeg powder

Method

Heat the milk and 1 tablespoon of ghee together. Rub in half the ghee to the gram flour. Add half the milk. Mix well and keep aside for half an hour. Pass mixture through a sieve so that no lumps remain. Cool and grind with the cardamom and nutmeg powder. Mix the flour and the atta together. Rub in 75 gm of the ghee. With the help of a little milk, make a soft dough. Divide the dough into small balls and make thin poli. Place a little filling on one half of the poli, leaving a slight space around the sides. Cover with the other half of the circle. Press the side and crimp so that the poli gets stuck. Shallow fry on a tawa until light golden. Serve with hot milk or ghee.

I adore these besan laddoos. I always bring a boxful whenever I visit my mother in Delhi.

Ingredients

• 500 gm gram flour
• 500 gm powdered sugar
• 200 gm ghee
• 1 tsp cardamom powder.

Method

Sift the gram flour. No lumps should remain. Heat the ghee until smoking hot. Lower the heat. Put in the gram flour and fry on medium heat until golden. It will also give out a lovely fried aroma. Take off fire. Wait for two minutes and add the powdered sugar. Cool till bearably hot and form into round balls with greased palms. Set aside to harden. Store in an airtight container. They keep well for quite some time.