The Ladoo story

I am fond of ladoos from my childhood.

Let me quickly quote Wikipedia which defines it very well.

Laddu or Laddoo or Ladoo(by delvin) is a ball-shaped sweet popular in Indian Subcontinent. Laddu is made of flour and sugar with other ingredients that vary by recipe. It is often served at festive or religious occasions.

I like all types of them. In Maharashtra, we make ladoos out of wheat flour, gram flour, semolina, desiccated coconut. The choice of sugar in the ladoos has greatly reduced now, owing to the growing awareness of sugar’s ill-effects on health. I know people who eat extremely sweet ladoos and if it is little less than their usual appetite, they discard the ladoos to be not good. In my childhood days, ladoos were made only for Diwali or Ganpati festival. But later, as I grew up, ladoos could be bought from the stores during anytime of the year. I was not an ardent fan of buying ladoos from outside, because I feared the quality of ghee which they might have used in it. My grandmother, my father’s dad makes the best ladoos in the world and her taste and sense of making them can’t be ever surpassed by any chef in the world. She loves cooking, but unfortunately, her genes in this respect did not come to me. I cook here in Germany, because I have no other option. I have slowly ventured out of the safe zone of just cooking the usual stuff and I am proud at my pace. 

My sonny has inherited the love for ladoos from me. His grandmother, his dad’s mother is a great cook too and she sent ladoos for him when we had gone to India for the home trip. They lasted only for a few days and then Tanay started asking me for ladoo as soon as he got back home from the crèche. Many days, I just postponed the thought of making ladoos myself as it was an unknown territory for me. I hadn’t prepared ladoos myself in my entire life of 35 years. But then I said to myself, there has to be a beginning some day, why not now, when he wants it the most. I saw many videos on youtube, referred many recipes and then finally made ladoos out of the easily available wheat flour to begin with. I had hazelnut powder, almond powder, cardamom powder. I mixed it in the flour too and added very less sugar, just to avoid making the ladoos diabetic. Then put some milk in it and then rolled into small balls. The balls were not perfect, but they tasted good. Here’s my recipe on how I made them:

I took:

3 cups of wheat floor

1 cup of ghee

1 cup of fine sugar

1 tablespoon of hazelnut powder

1 tablespoon of almond powder

Half a teaspoon of cardamom powder

Half a cup of warm milk

I put the ghee in the vessel on the gas and let the ghee melt. I then put the wheat flour and roasted it till it became brown and began to get dry. I roasted the flour for about 20 minutes and then put off the gas. I added hazelnut, almond and cardamom powder, sugar and mixed it well with hands. Then I put the half cup warm milk and it became ready to be rolled into balls. While it was warm, I rolled the balls applying little ghee on my hands as the greaser and rolled them into balls as far as possible.

Atul and Tanay loved them and Tanay now proudly sits munching on his ladoo in his favorite bowl and I feel blessed on seeing him eat with so much of dedication and love.

The next time, I am going to try the ladoos, albeit with a different ingredient, maybe semolina or gram flour.