Besan barfi
Preparation Time
5 minutes
Cooking Time
23 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Dessert
Serves 16
Key Ingredients
- Besan (chickpea flour)
About This Recipe
Besan ki barfi is a simple sweet of the roasted-besan family: flour, ghee and jaggery, nothing more. This version sweetens with jaggery rather than sugar, so the barfi carries a deeper, caramel-like note and sets without a one-string syrup stage; the jaggery is simply melted with water and poured into the hot flour.
The whole method hangs on the roast. The besan is stirred in hot ghee for a good ten minutes, past the stage where the raw smell disappears, until it turns old gold and the ghee starts to separate at the sides. That is what removes the raw gram taste and gives the barfi its colour; the syrup then binds the hot flour into a paste that turns firm as it cools.
The difference between besan barfi and mohanthal is the texture of the flour: mohanthal rubs ghee into the besan and sieves it to a coarse crumb, then binds it with sugar syrup, while barfi keeps the flour fine and whole, so the finished sweet is dense and smooth rather than crumbly. The pieces keep in an airtight tin at room temperature for about a week.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Barfi
- Besan (chickpea flour) — 1 cup
- Ghee — 6 tbsp
- Jaggery powder — 8 tbsp
- Water — 1/4 cup
- Cardamom Powder — 1/2 tsp
To finish
- Slivered almonds or pistachios — 1 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Pair a square with afternoon chai, or set them out on a sweet tray for guests. They are firm enough to pack into a dabba or lunchbox without sticking. For more roasted-flour sweets and the rest of the gram flour repertoire, see the besan recipes roundup.
Tips for Cooking Besan barfi
The roast decides the barfi; under-roasted flour tastes raw and over-roasted tastes bitter, so watch the colour, not the clock. A heavy kadhai stops the flour from scorching at the edges. If the mixture hardens before you press it flat, set the kadhai back on low heat for a minute to soften it. Keep the flame low all through; ghee smokes fast.
Chef’s Note
Each square comes to about 106 kcal, with 1.8 g protein, 10.7 g carbs, 6.1 g fat and 0.8 g fibre; the ghee supplies most of the fat and the jaggery most of the carbs. The cardamom and the nuts pressed on top are not counted, so a finished square carries a little more.
Per serving (approx.): 106 kcal, protein 1.8 g, carbs 11 g, fat 6.1 g, fibre 0.8 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Apr 27, 2026
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