Guava mysurpa, almond chocolate ladoo, and red banana halwa, there’s plenty to choose from this festive season

This festive season, choose from guava mysurpa, almond chocolate ladoo, and red banana halwa and an exciting line up of millet sweets and savouries

A sweet tradition

Watching 52-year-old K V Mangala make kaimurukku plays out like art in progress. She takes a lemon-sized dough in her hand and presses it with three fingers to make an elongated shape. As she gently twists and turns the dough to form four or five concentric circles on a neatly-cut plantain leaf, a beautiful portrait of kaimurukku stares out of the green canvas. “I started helping my parents when I was as young as six-years old,” says Mangala as she slides adirasam dough, shaped like flat circles, into hot oil and fries them to a crisp golden brown under the watchful eyes of her brother K V Kannan. They run Vedhapuri Catering on a quaint lane next to the over 100-year-old Ulagalandha Perumal Temple in Singanallur.

“We are taking forward the legacy of my father, late Veeraraghava Iyer from Palakkad who cooked elaborate vegetarian meals at weddings. My mother A K Lalitha, an expert in rolling kaimurkku, accompanied him to make sweets and savouries. That’s how it started. We also cater vegetarian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” says Kannan adding that the Singanallur agraharam, home to as many as 200 families, used to go by the name Vedhapuri, derived from ‘vedham’ and ‘purithal’ which means gaining knowledge and wisdom.

From sweet boondi ladoo, badusha and badam halwa to kaju katli and guava mysurpa, the kitchen doles 1500 kilograms of sweets during Deepavali. “Though we stick to traditional sweets, we have added guava and orange mysurpa made using the fruit extracts to add variety,” he says as we sample the melt-in-the-mouth guava mysurpa that has a hint of guava flavour without being overpowering.

Reminiscing her childhood days, Mangala says not a day passed without helping their parents in the kitchen to make thattai, seedai, and adirasam. “We children would quickly roll batches of kaimurkku before rushing to school. We still follow kai alavu, kan alavu for measuring ingredients, handed down by our parents. We also support women from 12 families here who help us in the kitchen,” says Mangala adding that consistency of sugar syrup is the key while making traditional sweets, especially adirasam. “The flat adirasam dough crumbles into pieces in hot oil if not done properly. We have made 21-round kaimurukku and also murukkus shaped like bowls, cricket bats, and balls for special orders.”

While the brother-sister duo is proud of the fact that their sweets have travelled across the country as well as abroad with a steady stream of repeat customers who buy them for generations, they declare that making of murukku — grinding, pounding, roasting, giving shape and frying — is nothing less than art.

To placer orders, call 9443185595 or 9095006268. Can be delivered across Tamil Nadu.