Holi goodies include the sweet gujiyas. How about a quick method to prepare these flavour bursting sweet meats?
Gujiyas are delicacies with a refined flour coating stuffed with roasted mawa, grated coconut, sugar and dry fruits of your choice. One bite into it and flavours burst into your mouth. If we go the traditional way we may end up spending a lot of time preparing them. And living in nuclear families time is one thing we are always short of. So let us tweak the traditional process without compromising on the taste.
The mawa we use for the stuffing is roasted, a step which takes some time. It then has to be cooled to before we can stuff it. To cut this process short we can use the Indian sweet ‘milk cake’ which is easily available at any Indian sweet meat store.
Instead of spending time grating coconut we can use shredded coconut we find at grocery stores. Roasted rawa is also available nowadays so we need not spend time roasting the rawa too.
The ingredients given here make a meagre 10 gujiyas. You can increase the quantity as per your requirement.
Gujiya - the quick method
Ingredients
- Maida - 1 cup
- Ghee - 4 tbsp + for deep frying
- Milk cake - 50 gm you can buy extra if you like them
- Shredded coconut - 50 gm
- Roasted rawa - 50 gm
- Sugar - 50 gm
- Elaichi powder - 1/2 tsp
- Raisins - 25 gm
Instructions
- Take the maida in a mixing bowl and add the ghee.
- Rub with hands to incorporate the ghee into the maida. It should resemble breadcrumbs. When held together in a fist the maida should retain its shape.
- Doing this ensures a crispy covering.
- Add enough water to kneed the maida into a soft dough.
- To prepare the stuffing- In a mixing bowl take the milk cake and crumble it.
- Add the roasted rawa, shredded coconut, sugar, elaichi powder and raisins.
- Mix well.
- Tada! The stuffing is ready.
- To prepare the gujiya- Make ten equal sized balls of the dough.
- Roll each ball into a thin circle. You should get an, approximately, 3 inch disk.
- Place one heaped teaspoon of the stuffing in the centre of the disk.
- Fold in half and seal the edges using a gujiya mould.
- (as you can see in the picture, my gujiyas are not made in the mould. I use the method used by mother, taught to her by my grandmother. It is a design made by hand and something I always associate with the gujiya)
- Deep fry the gujiyas in hot oil. You can keep them light coloured or fry till golden brown.
- Choice is all yours.