Besan ke laddu

Besan ke laddu are a North Indian festival sweet: made for Diwali, packed into steel dabbas for travelling relatives, and offered as prasad because they need nothing perishable. Besan is milled from chana dal, and the whole recipe is a lesson in roasting it. Raw besan tastes bitter and chalky; roasted properly in ghee it turns nutty, sweet-smelling and the colour of light caramel. That change takes 20 to 25 minutes on a low flame; a higher flame browns the flour on the outside and leaves the raw taste in.

Coarse ladoo besan gives the grainy, melt-slowly texture of a halwai laddu; regular besan works just as well if you roast two tablespoons of fine sooji with it for grain. What tells you it is done is the flow: the mixture starts as a stiff, dry lump, then loosens, and finally runs off the spatula in a thick ribbon while the kitchen smells of roasted gram. The sweetener goes in after the mixture cools to warm, never into hot besan: hot ghee melts sugar or jaggery, and a melted mixture will not bind into laddus.

Laddus that will not bind usually mean too little ghee, sweetener added while the besan was hot, or a mixture that went cold before rolling; laddus that turn hard mean over-roasting or too much sugar. Jaggery powder gives a darker, slightly earthy laddu; powdered sugar the classic pale one. Use a good bilona ghee: its aroma is most of the flavour here.