How About Some Sweets For My Sweetie?

I always talk about the spiciness of Indian Food but I haven't spoken much of the Indian Love for Sweets. Indians love sweets. That was a short post! Ok, just to illustrate my point, back home, I would keep a candy dish on my desk for anyone that wanted one, a small dish of candy (half of a 200g bag) $1Cdn (56Rp) would last a week in an office of about 200. Here, in an office of similar size, I buy a 500g bag of candy, 55Rp ($1Cdn), and it lasts three days. (I did the math for you, it is ten times as much.) Back home if I offer candy, the first response is, "No, Thank You.". Here, when I offer candy the response is, "Can I have two?".

Indian sweets are extremely sweet. So sweet that I can rarely eat more than a nibble before I am "sweeted out". I am always being offered some sort of sweet, so I have tried many things to date. One of the first treats I tried was Rasgullah. It is a Dairy based dessert, very sweet. It is basically cream, flour and sugar formed into a ball, boiled then soaked in sweetened coconut milk, serving size is a sphere with the diameter of a Silver Dollar (a Loonie to the Canucks), I can eat a half of one.

Soan papdi is butter, flour and sugar boiled then spread like a pie crust, to about one inch thickness, it dries flaky and tastes like compressed spun sugar (cotton candy squeezed into a ball) Serving size is a one inch cube, I can eat maybe a third. Gulab Jamb is cream, flour and sugar (are you seeing a trend) and spices, rolled into one inch balls, then deep fried and soaked in sugar syrup. I can eat a half of one.



Jangri is besan, butter and sugar mixed and rolled into tubes a tied up like a pretzel before deep frying, then soaked in sugar syrup. Serving size is about the size of your palm, I can eat less than a 1/4 of one. Pedas are a very dense mixture of dairy products, sugar, besan, saffron and other spices. It is served in a small 'puck' form about one and a half inches across, 1/2 inch thick, I can take a nibble off the side of one, so maybe one quarter or less. Sweetness is less of an issue than the overpowering taste of the saffron of which they use a lot. Chikki is sugar taffy similar to hard caramel taffy or what use would use to make the candy part of peanut brittle. Kheer, I have already told you about before knowing the name of it, it is rice cooed until it is completely broken down, flour, heavy cream and sugar with a fruit choice, almost custard thick (do not think this is just rice pudding). I cannot say enough about this dessert and I can finish a whole bowl. I will regret it later because it is so heavy but a little pain for a yummy gain.

If you are looking for the familiar; Cake is still Cake but slightly different and possibly better. Most cakes are 'three milk' style, probably the Spanish influence (tres leche) so they are very moist. If you want a Chocolate Bar, you can usually find the Major Brand Names, Snickers, Bounty, Mars, Kit Kat, etc. They come in two sizes, 25g for 15Rp (.27Cdn) and 54g (standard size in NA) for 30Rp (.54Cdn). There are local Brand names, that are knock-offs of the Major Brands at a small savings. Indians, however, prefer Dark Chocolate to Milk Chocolate. Also, they call everything 'Chocolate'; candy and chocolate combined, so if they ask for Chocolate, it is equally as likely they are asking for candy. You will not, however, find Pie. They seem to have never heard of Pie which surprises me because I had thought that Fruit Pies were found in British Cooking.

This is by no means a complete list of the sweets available here. So, if you have a sweet tooth, Indian sweets will most definitely satisfy and very quickly without having to eat a lot. For me, this has contributed to me needing to put a third hole in my belt, yay me!

Honesty is such a lonely word.