India is a country for sweets and desserts, a place where desserts after dinner or lunch, are a must and make the meal complete. Desserts or sweets are the cherry topping of Indian culture. Indian sweets and desserts are called mithai, a significant element of Indian cuisine.
Most of the Indian sweets are made with milk and ghee as it main recipient. Milk is incredibly important in India, especially for making desserts. Many are flavored with almonds, pistachios, spiced with cardamom, nutmeg, cloves, and black pepper decorated with nuts and silver and gold leaf.
In, India sweets are an important part of all festivals, functions or any happy occasion. It symbolizes the sweet beginning of the occasion celebrated. Of course, there is also a dessert in the last Indians and their fondness for sweet knows no bounds. No celebration is complete if there is nothing meetha in store.
Some of the dishes served in a thali are kheer, payasam, gulab jamun, barfi, etc. According to traditional ayurvedic wisdom, our meal should have all the six tastes- sweet, sour, salty, astringent, pungent, and bitter. Indian cuisine is very rich and diverse there are thousands of recipes and every region has its own specialty.
There are some popular Indian sweets
Kheer
Creamy aromatic kheer is made with basic ingredients and is the quintessential Indian dessert that every Indian grows up eating. It is made by boiling milk and sugar with one of the following: rice, broken wheat, millet, tapioca, vermicelli, or sweet corn. It is flavored with desiccated coconut, cardamom, raisins, saffron, cashews, pistachios, almonds, or other dry fruits and nuts.
Gulab Jamun
Gulab Jamun is one of India’s most popular sweet. These deep-fried dumplings/donuts made of dried milk (khoya) are dipped in rose-cardamom flavored sugar syrup. Soft, spongy, and melt in mouth gulab jamun drenched in delicately flavored sugar syrup in traditional sweet in India.
Read More : GULAB JAMUN
Barfi
It is a popular milk-based sweet. There is a wide variety of barfi available like milk barfi, besan barfi, kaju barfi, pista barfi, etc. The main ingredient of barfi is condensed milk and sugar. The flavor of a barfi is often enhanced with fruits (such as mango or coconut) or nuts (such as cashew, pistachio, or peanut) and spices (such as cardamom or rose water). It is coated with a thin layer of edible metallic leaf.
Khaja
Khaja is a traditional Indian dessert consisting of flour, sugar, and ghee-based dough that is deep-fried in oil until golden and crispy. It is soaked in sugar syrup. It has a wafery texture and melts in the mouth. There is also a special variety of khaja called belgrami which is not so sweet and is made from milk solids, sugar, and ghee.
Modak
Modak is a small dumpling-like sweet which is popular in many parts of India. It has a sweet filling of coconut and jaggery while the outer shell is made from rice flour. It can be steamed and deep-fried. It is considered to be the favorite sweet of the Hindu lord Ganesha.
Rasgulla
It is one of the popular sweet made from milk. Rasgulla is made from “chena” which is obtained by curdling the milk. The chena is mashed, made smooth, and then cooked in boiling sugar syrup. It comes from the state of West Bengal which is famous for its mouth-watering desserts.
Gajar Ka Halwa
It is a traditional Indian sweet or dessert made with fresh red carrots, milk, and sugar. It’s a winter delicacy and is made using the juicy red carrots. This sweet pudding mainly associated with North India, especially Punjab, is a rich, creamy dessert made using carrots, sugar, and full cream milk or condensed milk and khoya.
Read More : WINTER DELIGHT: GAJAR KA HALWA
Ladoo
It is a sphere-shaped sweet originating from the Indian subcontinent; the name originated from the Sanskrit word Lattika. Ladoo is made from flour, ghee, and sugar. It has some chopped nuts and raisins in it. There are various varieties of ladoo available like besan, boondi, coconut, pinni, etc. There are ayurvedic ladoo which is good for health.
Ras Malai
It is a classic Indian dessert made from milk, an acidic ingredient, sugar, saffron, and nuts. Curdling the milk into chena, then boiling the chena into the sugar syrup and lastly resting them into thickened milk. The name ras malai is the Hindi cognate of Bengali: rosh, meaning “juice”, and molai, meaning “cream”.
Peda
It is also a milk sweet originated from the Indian subcontinent. It is made with simple ingredients and flavored with cardamom, saffron, and pistachios. The word peda is also generically used to mean a sphere of any doughy substance. The key ingredient is khoya and sugar by which it is prepared. It is of creamy white color to golden color.
