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Sweet Boondi or Boondi or Bundiya is an Indian dessert made from sweetened, fried chickpea flour. Being very sweet, it can only be stored for a week or so. Due to the need for preserving food in arid regions of Rajasthan, boondi laddu are preferred. There is also a savoury version, called Khara or Tikha.

You may add different edible colours e.g. orange, green etc. while making sweet boondi. Sweet Boondi is an easy and quick to make dessert.

The main ingredients required to make this recipe are gram flour (besan), saffron (or some edible colours), almonds or pistachio (optional) for garnishing, green cardamom (optional), ghee and sugar. If you want you can sprinkle finely chopped dry fruits like almonds, pistachios etc on the sweet boondi before serving.

Sweet Boondi has a special significance in the northern part of India, where its consumption increases many folds/times specially on Tuesdays, as it is offered to Lord Hanuman in the form of prasad. On Tuesdays, Sweet Boondi can be found in almost every sweet shop, where they kept it in a large plate (a big parat), and is generally of orange or golden colour giving it a royal look.

It is a traditional Indian dessert which is usually made during festivals like Diwali, Dusshera, Raksha Bandhan etc. If you have a sweet tooth then you will like it.

The procedure to make boondi ladoo and sweet boondi are not the same. For boondi ladoo, boondis are not fried fully and taken when they are soft. But for this sweet boondi they are fried crisp and soaked in sugar syrup.

This is one of my favourite sweets since childhood, my parents bought this sweet from Sweets shop on Tuesdays as it was freshly prepared mainly on every Tuesday. We all loved it a lot. And here it's not available in sweet shops so I learned it and started making it at home. So we can enjoy it whenever we want to have it.

Ingredients

Preparation

• Take a broad non stick pan and add sugar and 1.5 cups of water into it. Mix it well and cook on a high flame for about 5-7 minutes or till the sugar syrup gets 1 thread consistency.

• To check the one string consistency, place a drop of sugar syrup in between your thumb and index finger and then when you move fingers away from each other, it should form a single thread.

• Once the sugar is dissolved completely and the syrup becomes a little sticky, turn off the flame and keep it aside for later use.

• Soak saffron in 1 tablespoon of water and mix well.

• Sieve the gram flour/besan in a vessel and add a pinch of orange food colour (edible) and water to it. Also add the already soaked saffron water mixture into it. Mix it well and make sure that the batter doesn't get too thin and no lumps are formed.

• Now heat ghee in a pan or a kadai over medium flame. Hold a perforated spoon a little above the hot ghee and pour some gram flour batter onto the spoon. Allow small droplets to fall in the ghee by tapping the edge of the spoon lightly.

• Stir it and deep fry the boondis in the ghee gently and fry them till they get crisp but not brown.

• Now take out the boondis on a clean kitchen towel or paper towel to drain off the excess ghee.

• Then put the boondis in the already prepared sugar syrup and keep them there for 5 minutes before taking out from the syrup.

• Take a wide plate and spread the boondis on it, garnish it by adding chopped almonds and pistachios and mix them gently. (Adding dry fruits is an optional step).

• Allow the boondis to cool completely and loosen the boondis with your fingers till each droplet separates.

• Sweet boondi is ready to serve.

• Boondis can be eaten fresh or you can store them in an air tight container to serve and enjoy later.