From besan (chickpea flour) ki mithai to the moti choor laddu done right, and the succulent gulab jamun, to the flaky coconut mithai, pedaand barfi. We all love our mithai!

The allure of mithai, however, has only come to me after having matured in age and mind, and having moved away from the shores of the Arabian Sea, how I now miss Sony Sweets, Sunshine, Gulshan Sweets and Abdul Khaliq of the 90s.

The Oxford dictionary defines the laddu as an Indian confection, typically made from flour, sugar and shortening, that is shaped into a ball.

From this extremely English description we can safely assume that theladdu is an ancient dessert, and may as well have travelled centuries from the time of Chandra Gupta Maurya, as is popularly claimed.

My research has led me to believe that some form of flour base, sweet and shortening has always been available to the people of the subcontinent, hence it may be that they combined the three to create the very roundladdu.

In the book Sweet Inventions: A history of Desserts by Michael Krondl, it is stated,

The modaka is a steamed or fried rice flour dumpling with a mixture of unrefined sugar and coconut.

One of the many anecdotes told about baby Krishna is how the elephant god introduced the tubby toddler to this, his beloved snack. Evidently Krishna’s mother put an offering of modaka in front of a ganesha idol, and well aware of her young rascals thieving ways, she tied her son’s hands behind his back to keep the modaka safe. The good- hearted ganesha would have none of this.