Jalebi ~ ICC August 2011

This post is for the Indian cooking challenge by Srivalli of Spicing your life.

Crispy crunchy swirls of batter deep fried and  dipped is aromatic saffron and cardamom infused syrup makes these awesome jalebis simply mouthwatering  and delectable.

 

Ingredients:

Sunflower oil for frying
Few almonds and pistachio nuts for garnish.(optional)

Batter
100 grams plain flour
30 grams corn flour
2-3 drops yellow food colouring
Few strands saffron
1 cup natural yoghurt
1 tablespoon sunflower hot oil

Sugar syrup
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
Few strands of saffron
1 teaspoon cardamom powder
1 teaspoon lemon juice.

Method:

1.Mix together the plain flour, corn flour, yoghurt, saffron, food colour and hot hoil and make a smooth lump free batter
2. Cover  batter and leave overnight to ferment.
3. Heat the sugar and water and lemon juice to form a sweet syrup just a little less than 1 thread in consistency.(Thread Stage 215° F–235° F/108° C–118° C on sugar thermometer)(Lemon juice prevents sugar syrup from crystalising)
4. Heat oil in a pan and while its heating fill up a plastic ketchup/mustard bottle with the batter mixture.(Alternatively use a zip lock bag with a tiny hole cut in the bottom of it.)
5. When oil is medium hot, squeeze batter  to form mini  swirls into the hot oil and fry jalebis  until golden brown on both sides.
6.Immediately remove jalebis from hot oil and shake off access oil and dip them in  warm sugar syrup to coat both sides.
7. Remove jalebis from syrupas soon as you have dipped them to retain crunch  and place them on serving dish .Repeat procedure for remaining batter.
8. Garnish with almond and pistachio slivers if desired.
Serve hot.

Notes-
Jalebi batter turned out a little too thin  and made it difficult to form uniform swirls.I had to add another tablespoon of corn flour to thicken the batter. I think batter was thin because my yoghurt was low fat and very runny.

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