Gond ke laddu, is a North Indian delicacy, prevalently made in Punjab, Haryana, UP, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra. In Marathi, it’s Dink laddu, in Punjabi, it’s Panjeeri laddu or Pinni. The demand for this laddu shoots up during winter for its nutritive values.
Let me give a brief note on this laddu for the newbies. As the name implies, gond is the key ingredient in this recipe. Gond is an edible gum obtained from the sap of the Acacia 🌳 🎋. It has various names such as gondh, gaund, dink, arabic gum, acacia gum, so on. Gond is versatile in its usage, due to its emulsifying, stabilising, thickening property starting from the food industry to prepare candies, ice creams, soft drinks, alcohols, and wines, to cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, paint, and printing industry as well.
Listing of Gond’s nutritional value, I can’t stop with one benefit. Let me list down all of them-
- Rich in Calcium and Iron, helping to boost the immune system and stamina.
- Rich in protein, thus helping the bone joints.
- Helps to increase Vitamin D.
- Helps to boost the immune system, thus aiding the weak and fatigued people.
- Powerhouse of energy, apt food for the lactating mothers as they need to replenish their energy after breastfeeding, best galactagogue agent.
- Act as a good skincare agent.
- Due to its warm and high caloric properties, best consumed during winters.
People who are looking to increase weight, or recovering from ailments or injuries, should consume this to boost their energy and increase the calorie. Considering the same caloric value, it should be taken moderately by others.
Gond can be included in diet apart from laddus, as chikkis, churans, and khadas. It’s available in yellowish to brown crystal forms, in variant sizes. Gond has a long storage life at room temperature, provided they are stored in an airtight container.
After a long run on the benefits and nutritive facts of gond, let me describe this recipe. In Gond ke Laddu, apart from gond, it contains, dry fruits, nuts, dry coconut, jaggery, or sugar bound with wheat flour and ghee. Every region in North, have their own versions, they include or exclude one ingredient from the other, but basic key ingredients are Gond, jaggery/sugar/palm sugar, dry fruits, and ghee. This laddu is so versatile that you can play with the ingredients, you can manipulate, you can introduce a new item, you can replace one ingredient with another, it’s quite flexible.
I tried this recipe with a few ingredients too, before arriving at this healthy recipe. Before revealing the ingredients, I would like to credit my friends Pallavi (from Punjab), Ruchi (from Rajasthan) and another friend (from Maharashtra), who gave their family recipes. They were so kind as to share their mom’s recipe with me and generous enough to tolerate my queries and questions to arrive at this perfect Gond ke laddu. As I mentioned above, they are from different regions of India, so they had their own versions. I made a mix n match and added a few ingredients of my choice to make it healthier. Again, I thank my friends for helping me to post this recipe, with their wonderful guidance…🤝🤝🤝.
One healthy twist in this recipe is the inclusion of Bajra/Pearl millet flour in the place of wheat flour (credit to Pallavi). I should say, it tasted better than wheat flour. As Bajra has its own flavour and fragrance, it imparts an excellent nutty taste and aroma to the sweet. On the nutritional side, pearl millet is packed with nutrients, antioxidants, proteins, iron content, aids in weight loss, reduces blood sugar level, and is gluten-free as well.
Apart from bajra, I added figs and dates which would otherwise be untouched by my elder one…😉😉. Let’s get into the recipe.
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Finely chop the dry fruits dates, figs, and raisins. Fry them in 2 tbsp ghee on medium flame till it turns golden brown, drain them, and keep aside.
In the same ghee, add the grated dry coconut (kopra).
Roast it for 2-3 minutes or till it turns brown, drain it, and keep it aside.
In the same pan, add 4 tbsp ghee, let it heat moderately. Then take a handful of gond.
Fry it in the ghee till it turns puffs up (like popcorn). It’ll roughly take 2 minutes.
Similarly, repeat the same for the rest of the gond in small batches. For ½ cup of gond, I fried it in 4 batches. Let it cool down. Now heat the pan with ½ cup of ghee on medium flame. Add 1 cup of Pearl millet/Bajra to it, combine the ghee with the flour.
Now turn to low flame, keep roasting for 20 minutes minimum with consistent stirring.
While flour is getting roasted, coarsely crush the roasted gond using mortar and pestle or with a rolling pin or in a mixer grinder (just pulse it).
Roughly after 20 minutes of roasting, switch off the flame. Add ¾ cup powdered jaggery to melt and mix in the roasted flour heat.
Mix well till it combines well.
Then add cardamom powder, nutmeg powder, dry ginger powder, and coarsely ground dry nuts powder (mix of cashews, almonds, and pistachios) to it
And mix well.
Transfer this to a wide bowl or plate when it is warm.
Add the crushed gond.
Then add fried dry fruits (dates, figs, and raisins), and roasted coconut. Combine well thoroughly.
Grease your hands with ghee.
Roll balls tightly from the mixture.
It’ll yield roughly 16 balls.
Arrange the healthy tasty laddus in an airtight container and it can be stored for a month at room temperature.
Recipe card
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Cuisine: North Indian
Category: Sweets
Yields: 16-17
Author: Manimala
Ingredients:
Pearl millet/Bajra/Kambu – 1 cup
Gond/Edible gum – ½ cup
Powdered Jaggery/palm sugar – ¾ cup
Grated Dry Coconut – ½ cup
Ghee – ½ cup + 6 tbsp
Powdered Cashews, Almonds, Pistachios – 4 tbsp
Chopped Dates – 2 tbsp
Chopped Figs – 2 tbsp
Chopped Raisins – 2 tbsp
Cardamom powder – ½ tsp
Nutmeg powder – ¼ tsp
Dry Ginger powder – ¼ tsp
Instructions:
- Finely chop the dry fruits dates, figs, and raisins. Fry them in 2 tbsp ghee on medium flame till it turns golden brown, drain them, and keep aside.
- In the same ghee, add the grated dry coconut (kopra), roast it for 2-3 minutes or till it turns brown, drain it, and keep it aside.
- In the same pan, add 4 tbsp ghee, let it heat moderately. Then take a handful of gond, fry it in the ghee till it turns puffs up (like popcorn). It’ll roughly take 2 minutes.
- Similarly, repeat the same for the rest of the gond in small batches. For ½ cup of gond, I fried it in 4 batches. Let it cool down.
- Now heat the pan with ½ cup of ghee on medium flame. Add 1 cup of Pearl millet/Bajra to it, combine the ghee with the flour.
- Now turn to low flame, keep roasting for 20 minutes minimum with consistent stirring.
- While flour is getting roasted, coarsely crush the roasted gond using mortar and pestle or with a rolling pin or in a mixer grinder (just pulse it).
- Roughly after 20 minutes of roasting, switch off the flame. Add ¾ cup powdered jaggery to melt and mix in the roasted flour heat. Mix well till it combines well.
- Then add cardamom powder, nutmeg powder, dry ginger powder, and coarsely ground dry nuts powder (mix of cashews, almonds, and pistachios) to it and mix well.
- Transfer this to a wide bowl or plate when it is warm, then add the crushed gond, fried dry fruits (dates, figs, and raisins), and roasted coconut. Combine well thoroughly.
- Grease your hands with ghee, roll balls tightly from the mixture. It’ll yield roughly 16 balls.
- Arrange the healthy tasty laddus in an airtight container and it can be stored for a month at room temperature.
Notes:
- As I mentioned above, I replaced Bajra with wheat flour, you can still use whole wheat flour also. Trust me, bajra due to its nutty flavour gives the laddu an exceptional and improved flavour than wheat.
As a healthy option, you can also try foxtail millet/thinai flour for Bajra. (It’ll be my next try…😉😃).
- Roasting the flour needs a lot of patience as it requires a minimum of 20 minutes with constant stirring. Better keep it in the lowest flame and roast it. Keep stirring on and off, if it’s in low flame and parallelly you can work on crushing the fried gond. But make sure, you don’t burn the flour, as it’ll be bitter if you add the burnt flour to the laddus. Better discard if you burn the flour accidentally.
- You can be flexible in adding the nuts and dry fruits of your choice and availability.
- Also, you can be flexible in including or excluding coconut. If you are doing it with fresh coconut, you’ll miss the flavour of dry coconut and the storage life.
- Similarly, you can add jaggery or sugar or country sugar according to your choice. I used jaggery for its taste and nutritional value as it’s loaded with iron.
- If you are adding sugar in the place of jaggery, then add it to the flour once cooled down a bit (warm). Do not add immediately after you switch off the flame as I did with jaggery, because jaggery must be mixed well to get a homogeneous mixture. If sugar is added at this stage, it’ll melt.
- While frying gond, be careful with the ghee heat, it should be moderate. Also, while frying do it in small batches, as they tend to clog together if fried in large quantities and may not puff.
- Undercooked gond may cause stomach problems or indigestion. Be cautious while frying the gond, check the temperature of the ghee, and fry it in small batches, giving enough space to puff up. Do not overcrowd gond while frying.
- I have mentioned ½ cup + 6 tbsp ghee. I used ½ cup to roast bajra flour. From 6 tbsp, I used 2 tbsp to fry dry fruits and dry coconut. The remaining 4 tbsp, I used to fry the gond. If 4 tbsp ghee is not sufficient to fry 4 batches of gond, you can add another tbsp or more to fry it effectively.
- You can reduce ½ cup of ghee to 1/3 cup to roast the flour, as the ghee was oozing out when I was holding laddus, maybe the quality of jaggery affected it. So, better manipulate the amount of ghee to roast as you can add at a later stage also when you feel the laddus are not holding shape. Start with 1/3 cup, then you can add 2 tbsp more if required.
- The quantity of ghee is adjustable and is subjective to the weather, quality of ghee, and gond. If your laddus are not holding shape and are brittle, you can add little ghee to bind them. On the other hand, I felt my laddus were oozing ghee a bit, so I was literally squeezing the ghee while rolling the balls. Or you can wait for some time and roll as the ghee will solidify by cooling and easily you can roll it later without breaking. Ghee helps to mellow down the heat given by gond.
- Do not overeat laddus owing to its calorific value. For growing children, 2 per day at max. For adults, 1 per day. It’s sufficient. Generally, North Indians have it with warm milk for breakfast. Or you can have it as a dessert after a meal.