My Food Story: Adversity is actually the mother of invention

Urad dal laddoos were traditionally made in our home by our grandmother on my father’s birthday. When my father was young, his family didn’t have enough money to buy sweets from shop. One day, when he insisted on having some sweets, my grandmother went to the kitchen found some soaked urad dal and made these amazing laddoos. Since that day, on every occasion, we make this super delicious melt-in-mouth urad dal laddoos.

Urad dal laddoo

Ingredients

Urad dal – 1 cup

Desi Ghee – 1/4 cup

Sugar – 1/2 Cup

Desiccated coconut – 2 tbsp

Almonds – 5

Cashew – 7

Raisin – 8-10

For green colour, use the skin of urad dal (1 tbsp).

Method

Soak urad dal and grind with one tablespoon of green peel. Heat ghee and fry the nuts. Now keep cooking the dal for 20 minutes on low flame, adding ghee in small amounts. Add sugar and two tablespoons of milk and nuts. Now, bind the laddoos and coat them in desiccated coconut.

My Food Story is a collection of stories and recipes that celebrate India’s traditional plant-based ingredients sourced from local biodiversity. You can see these recipes on our interactive dashboard (https://www.cseindia.org/page/myfoodstory).

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Prachi Saxena is a teacher from Uttar Pradesh