Diwali Faral - Karanji / Gujiya

Every year as Diwali comes near I start missing the days back home when mom would make lots of faral at home and I could replace all my meals with faral ! This year I thought of taking some help from mom and giving these delicacies a shot. Karanji also known as gujiya by some was the first thing I made.

Ingredients

1 cup maida (all purpose flour)

1/4 cup whole wheat flour (atta)

4 tablespoon ghee

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon cardamom powder

1/2 cup dessicated coconut

1/4 cup raisins

Water

Salt

Procedure

1. Place maida in a mixing bowl suitable for making dough. Add a couple pinches salt to it to give the outer covering a nice savory taste.

2. Heat 2 tablespoons of ghee in a pan. When the ghee is about to let out some smoke quickly pour it into the maida. Mix using a whisk since the ghee is hot.

3. After mixing it well now start adding warm water little by little to make the maida dough.

4. The dough should be soft and malleable.

5. Let the dough rest for an hour.

6. For the stuffing (saaran) put the sugar in your mixer and make into a powder. I dont usually buy powdered sugar, I prefer doing it myself.

7. Tranfer the powdered sugar into another bowl.

8. Add 1/2 cup dessicated coconut to the powdered sugar and mix it. You can add the raisins at this stage.

9. Heat 2 tablespoons ghee in a pan. Once it becomes hot then add your wheat flour to it and start roasting it. Once the flour starts giving out an aroma turn off the heat.

10. Add the wheat flour to the sugar mixture and mix again.

At this point your filling (saaran) is ready.

11. Roll out the dough into equal sized balls.

12. This dough does not usually stick to the chakla (roti board) so you dont need to put any flour on the board.

13. Roll small pooris from the dough balls. Make the poori thin but not too thin because it has to withstand the weight of the filling.

14. Once you have rolled out the poori then take one spoonful of the filling and place it in one half of the poori. If you think there is space for more filling then add a little more.

15. Line the edges of half of the poori containing the filling with little bit of water. Flip over the other side of the poori in which you didnt place any filling to make it coincide with the watered edges. Now seal the edges by pressing together.

16. You may remove the excess dough from the sides using a karanji cutter and then use a fork to seal the edges better. Or you may fold the edges to further prevent any possible breakage in the karanji,

17. Heat some oil (or ghee if you prefer) for frying the karanji

18. Once the oil becomes hot, slowly lower your karanjis into it and fry them till they get a light color on them and their outer covering looks cooked.

19. Slowly take them out of the oil and place them on a paper towel lined plate.

Karanjis done !