SUNDAY DESSERT #10: Besan Ladoo
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: India 🇮🇳
DIFFICULTY LEVEL: Intermediate
INSPIRATION: We recently rewatched Life of Pi. Have you ever read the book or seen the movie? It's an absolute favorite at our house (both the book and the movie). Anyway, it's partially set in India and it inspired me to explore one of the more popular Indian desserts.
RECEPTION/COMMENTARY: A ladoo (or laddu) is any type of spherical food in Indian cuisine. There are many different types of ladoo ranging from savory to sweet. Besan Ladoo is a sweet ladoo made out of besan (chickpea flour), ghee, sugar, and cardamom. Sometimes nuts like cashew or pistachio are added as well. The trickiest part of making this dessert is pan roasting the besan to make it golden and aromatic without burning it.
Tasting the ladoo was an interesting experience. The ball is like tightly pressed powder and once in your mouth, it melts into a peanut butter-like consistency. The flavor was good... at first. Like a lightly sweetened nutty taste. But the cardamom and besan flavors were quickly overpowering. It was such a weird experience to expect this amazing flavor (since it's so popular), but then to be sorely disappointed when it's not. Quite the opposite, actually. Needless to say, this was not my favorite. Jared and Anna hated it! Haha! Maybe it's an acquired taste or maybe I made it wrong. I'm not sure since I've never had it before; or any Indian dessert for that matter. I'd rate it a 2/10 given it's not the most terrible thing I've ever tasted.
WOULD I MAKE IT AGAIN? Nope on a rope. But, I am still glad we tried something new even if it didn't taste as expected.
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