Easy Besan (Gram flour) laddoo recipe for amateurs

Cooking is not really one of my favourite things. The thing which inspires me to cook and experiment with food is Health. I’m passionate about my and my family’s health. For that, I’m ready to go that extra mile and experiment with recipes that would appeal to them.

I discourage junk food at home, but let me make this clear that there are also days when I end up eating Aata Maggi (ready made noodles) for Dinner or may be give jam cookies to my son 3 days in a row.

What matters is making an effort as much as you can!

Gram flour (besan) laddoo is a popular Indian sweet and extremely nutritious. It is a house favourite. All of us love it. After a few failures I finally learnt an easy recipe from my mother-in-law and now I find it very easy to make. Therefore, I make it often. It is a nutritious snack for kids; better than the store-bought cookies any day.

 

Here’s an easy recipe to make besan laddoo at home:

Ingredients

1 cup = 150 gms

• Gram flour / Besan : 3 cups
• Semolina / Sooji (of fine quality) : 1 cup
• Clarified butter / Ghee : 1 cup (approximately)
• Powdered Sugar : 3/4 cup (or as per taste)

 

Method

 

1. Heat a wok and add 3/4th of the total ghee.
2. Add Besan and Sooji to the ghee and roast the mixture on low flame till you get a roasted aroma from the mixture and the colour is golden brown. Make sure that the mixture has roasted evenly by stirring it continuously and breaking all the lumps.
3. Keep adding the rest of the ghee as and when required. The idea is NOT to make the mixture too oily because you would not be able to make laddoos otherwise. Initially, you might feel that the mixture is dry but DON’T put more ghee in the beginning.
4. When it has been roasted, it leaves ghee which is also a sign that the mixture has been cooked well.
5. You can always add more ghee towards the end if you feel that the cooked mixture is dry but adding too much in the beginning can backfire (has happened to me many times earlier).
6. Once cooked, take off the mixture from the heat and let it cool down. When it cools down, add the powdered sugar and make small smooth balls of laddoo.

Tips

 

• Always keep the ghee on a lower side. You can always add more ghee, if required, towards the end. If you end up having too much ghee in your mixture, you cannot do anything except eat it as a halwa 🙂 [been there, done that!]. But let me not scare you, it is really not that difficult. For example, if the ghee required is 1 cup, put only about 3/4th cup to begin with. Let the mixture roast well, you would know if you should add more.
• We personally don’t like the laddoos with only besan because it tends to stick to the mouth. We are adding sooji for a textured taste. You can also use besan that is coarse and not too fine.
• There is no rocket science to the proportions. Just keep it 3:1 of besan and sooji respectively. Always use the finer quality sooji. You can experiement with the proportions according to your taste and what kind of flour you are using.
• What I personally do is cook the mixture slowly on low flame while I’m there in the kitchen for cooking lunch / dinner. This way you don’t really have to invest any extra time to roast the besan and sooji mixture.

Sometimes I just put everything together in a wok and roast it on low flame for a long time. There isn’t a special technique to it. What you need at the end is a moist mixture that can be made into laddoos. You can add cardamom powder for flavour and dry fruits, if you want.

Let me know how it comes along!