The many moods of mithai for Deepavali

Traditional sweets make a comeback with online and offline sessions buzzing with festive energy It is the season to savour traditional and modern mithai, made with love and nostalgia.

Deepavali celebrations are incomplete without sweets, a blend of cherished family recipes passed down generations, and some sweet treats recreated by culinary enthusiasts who have honed skills from online/offline sessions. This year too, a melange of flavours treats the taste buds .

The mithai platter at Khushboo Jain’s house in Hyderabad combines tradition and novelty. What remains unchanged is a 40-year-old family tradition of distributing ghee-dipped gond ka ladoo among friends and relatives.

The key ingredients that make Khusbhoo’s mother-in-law’s ladoos delicious are the gond (edible gum) sourced from Rajasthan and homemade mawa. “Her ladoos are awaited the whole year because she makes them only before Deepavali,” says Khushboo, a director at the manufacturing unit of Jeevan Shree Polypacks.

Khushboo is also a culinary student of city-based gourmet startup Kitchen Stories and prefers novelty in her sweet spread.

A table with pieces of bhapa sandesh sits pretty on top of crushed nougat in wine glasses drizzled with rose/kewra water, is to entice guests for the Deepavali party at home. “It is exciting to try something new; experimenting with new flavours is an opportunity to be creative,” she says.

Homemade sweets add to the warmth of intimate celebrations. For instance, Chennai-based former banker, Geeta Ramani, has learnt to make rasgulla and rasmalai from a cookery session, to indulge her Bengali son-in-law. Yet her personal favourite is a 25-year-old sweet ritual; she and her husband SR Ramani prepare the traditional delights mysorepak and maaladu with split roasted gram flour two days before Deepavali.

“I learnt these sweets by watching my mother make them. Like her, I make them only with homemade ghee,” she says, adding she gets tensed till it is set and once it is done, the couple celebrate by tasting a small piece of the slightly warm mysorepak left in the kalchatti. “The slight aroma of ghee and its sweet, melt-in-mouth texture brings joy,” she says.