Wheat Flour Ladoos (Pitta Undo, Atta Laddos, Churmundo)

Ladoos or laddu are ball-shaped sweets. These ladoos made of wheat flour called as pitta undo in konkani are delightful and yummy and have been my favourite since childhood. I just love them. :-) I eat them like 10 in a row. ;-) Yeah, I do have a sweet tooth. My hubby loves these ladoos too. These ladoos have to be eaten softly and gently or else they burst in your mouth. They are that delicate and soft. To make these laddus wheat flour is fried with ghee, mixed with powdered sugar and made into ladoos with cardamom powder, raisins, roasted cashews.

The difficult part is making them into ladoos with your hands. Ahaha, thats not easy. Takes a lot of practise as the dough is very slippery and does not bind together easily. So, my hubby devised a plan when he was ten. Can you believe it?? I didnt start cooking until I was 24. (Yeah girls these days... :-) ) He uses a chakuli maker actually a presser which is used to make chakulis. Fill the fried dough in them and press hard to make circular, cylinders. Depending on how thick you want your ladoo barfi to be, add dough accordingly. The more dough you add, the thicker barfi you get. Keep a cashew or almond or raisin if you like in the middle of dough before pressing and you'll have them ingrained on your barfi. So, if you try this recipe and are not able to make ladoos then you can use my hubby's plan to make cute cylinders instead of ladoos. The taste is worth a try.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup ghee
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
2 tablespoons of raisins(optional)
2 tablespoons of cashew(optional)

Serves: 2

Preparation Method:

Heat up a heavy bottomed pan and add ghee.

Once the ghee melts, add wheat flour and mix well.

Roast the flour on medium flame with continuous stirring and sauting.

Roast the flour until the colour of the wheat flour changes and you get a roasted appearance. That is when you get a nice aroma of roasted wheat flour and ghee.

Turn off heat and let it cool completely.

Meanwhile grind sugar to make a fine powder of sugar.

Once the roasted flour cools completely, add in the powdered sugar, cardamom powder, raisins, chopped nuts and mix well.

Use nuts of your choice. We usually use only raisins and roasted cashews. They taste just fine even without the raisins and nuts or with just the raisins.

Adjust sugar according to the sweetness you desire.

Heat a frying pan, add ghee and cashews and roast cahews until they start to brown. The aroma of roasted cashew's too good. You can even roast them in the oven.

Add roasted cashews to the flour mix and mix well.

Take a handful of the mixture and press them into small, round, lemon sized balls with your hand.

Do not apply too much pressure while making them into balls. Apply slight pressure on the ladoos to keep them intact.

Add more ghee to the mixture and mix again, if the laddus do not hold their shape.

If this is too much of a hassle then just pour the mixture into chakuli maker and press it onto a plate and serve.

For more Konkani desserts and sweets recipes look here.

Tags: Sweets, Ladoos, Laddu, Indian sweets, Konkani sweets, Konkani recipe, Konkani dish, Konkani cuisine, Udupi cuisine, Mangalore food, Konkani food, Ganesh chaturthi.