As a food blogger, I am inclined to experiment with new recipes now and then, especially around the festive season. But this time, I did not wish to craft the usual sweets.

I am always on the lookout for unconventional recipes that are a bit guilt-free. 😇

Before you unceremoniously term me as a health influenza (🥹), let me state that I wanted to make sweets out of millets and fibre/nutrient dense sources of sugar. 

So I decided to try a new recipe and shoot it at the same time. I also weighed in on the risk of the recipe not turning out to be good enough but then we can always post the failed recipe as a learning, right? We should post more about failures and learnings so that the our audience realizes that recipe crafting is not a specialized skill. We learn as we go.

Anyway, back to the laddoos – so I decided to formulate bajra besan laddoo. I roasted the flours together while soaking the dates, figs and black raisins in warm water.

But as usual, my dear brain decided to get lost in the pre-Diwali clean air of Delhi NCR and forget that these three soaked dry fruits need to be “dried” properly before being ground in a grinder. 

You see, the water in these soaked dry fruits can render the mixture sticky after the grinding process. Getting the sticky mixture off the grinder blades can feel like getting the remnants of Melody (itni chocolaty kyu hai!) toffee from your teeth. It is a messy process that can feel taxing if your mom keeps stressing to clean it nicely before she has to grind her coarse spices in it.

While you are constantly stirring that flour mixture so that it doesn’t burn out! 

No need of weight training that day!

The stirring has to continue till the mixture resembles the lifesaver of oily-skinned beauties – the Multaani mitti! And then it has to be cooled down and grounded sweeteners and roasted pistachios and cashews added. The real struggle begins after adding the sticky sweetener mixture. Since we want the sweetness to be evenly distributed, the jaw clenching sticky mixture has to be separated and broken down into smaller chunks. 

The only respite I had while doing this was that this sticky mixture will at least bind the laddoos well because millets are trickier to bind.

But then my mom tasted the mixture and commented that there is no sweetness in it and how could I even think that 2 dates, 3 figs and 4-5 raisins will be enough for 1.5 cups of flour with 1/2 cup of grounded dry fruits? 

I could almost see no Diwali special posts on my blog. 🥹

I ground white sugar and added it to the mixture and kept on adding it till my mom was satisfied with the sweetness. Let me tell you that she has a low sugar tolerance, so we had only moderate sweetness in the mixture. 

I decided to rest a bit but then my mom took matters into her own hands and started roasting the mixture again. My father pitched in with his commentary that sugar in the mixture will form lumps and the mixture will go bad. 

Absolute chaos!

I had gone numb by then and decided to take a power nap of 20 minutes. When I woke up and went to the kitchen area, I could see 20 odd laddoos just sitting there while my mom marvelled at them. Considering my FOMO of not being able to make these laddoos, I argued with my mom that why couldn’t she wait for me to make the laddoos.

Her usual response: the maid will come in some time and she had to empty all the utensils.

I was also reprimanded to be thankful to her for finishing the cooking, so I decided to garnish the sweets with saffron and cashews and then shoot the final product.

The laddoos tasted good to my mom so I can vouch for their taste. My opinion about my own cooking doesn’t matter as I can eat burnt rotis that I prepare. 🤣

Oh yes, the maid came 2 hours after my mom was finished with the laddoos that day. 😂

Here is the link to the recipe: https://youtube.com/shorts/eYFM1atwHXI?si=mUEH2D7bTesWtbFg