Shakkarpara
Shakkarpara is am Indian style deep fried, mildly sweet biscuits made using basic ingredients in pantry - Plain flour, Ghee and Sugar flavoured with Cardamom powder
Ingredients
- 2½ cups Maida or Plain Flour
- ¼ cup Ghee or Clarified Butter
- ¾ cup Sugar
- ½ tsp Salt
- ½ tsp Cardamom Powder
- ½ cup Warm Water
- Oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Powder the sugar coarsely in mixer grinder.
- In a mixing bowl, add the powdered sugar, ghee, salt and around half a cup warm water. Whisk well till the sugar is incorporated.
- Now add 1 cup of plain flour or Maida, and whisk well.
- Next add another 1 cup of maida and mix again.
- Finally add the remaining half cup of maida and cardamom powder and knead the dough well using hands. Sprinkle water if required.
- The dough should be a medium soft (like puri dough). Cover this dough and rest for at least 30 minutes.
- Now, divide the dough in 4 portions.
- Roll each of the portion one by one. Roll it thick, roughly around half a centimetre in thickness. Need not dust the dough with flour or ghee, as it has sufficient ghee in it.
- Now using a pizza cutter, or biscuit cutter (rolling knife), cut the rolled dough into squares.
- Separate each of the squares.
- Heat oil in a kadai. Once oil is just hot, turn the flame to low. Now assemble the cut square pieces in a ladle and transfer to oil. Repeat the process till there is enough space in oil.
- Cook the shakkarpara in low to medium flame while tossing in between.
- Take the shakkarpara out of oil while it is golden pink in colour. Transfer to a tissue paper so that the excess oil is absorbed. Leave it in open till it completely cools down.
- Fry the remaining shakkarpara. Once cooled completely, store in an air-tight container at room temperature.
Notes
- Use good quality maida and ghee for best results.
- In the above recipe, the measurement given for sugar is regular sugar (before powdering it). If you are using powdered sugar, use 2/3rd cup for this recipe.
- You can also use warm milk instead of water for kneading the dough.
- Do not use icing sugar for this recipe, as it contains corn starch.
- Cook the shakkarpara on low to medium flame to ensure it is cooked through inside.
- Shakkarpara continues to cook and change colour even after taking it out of oil, so take it out of oil while it has turned golden pink in colour.
- Shakkarpara becomes crunchy from inside once cooled down. When consumed hot, it would be soft from inside, so do not panic.