Makar Sankranti usually falls around the second week of January and marks the transition from cold winters to warmer spring days. This harvest festival is celebrated across the country in different ways and is especially popular in Gujarat where kite flying is a favourite pastime of the season. Gond Pak, also known as Gundar Paak is a sweet laddoo that uses a very unusual ingredient which comes with a wide range of benefits.
Gond (or Gondh) is an edible gum made from the sap of the Acacia plant. Also known as Tragacanth this natural gum is found in particular varieties of gum-producing plants that are found in parts of the Middle East, Maharashtra, Punjab, and Gujarat. Since it’s water soluble it’s mixed into many ingredients to form a nourishing liquid that is loaded with nutrition and often given to nursing mothers or people recovering from an illness.
Thanks to its viscous texture, it’s often used as a binding, emulsifying or thickening agent both in the medicinal fields and the culinary ones. In Gujarat, it’s chiefly made into laddoos with mava and dry fruits for its high-calorie content but its natural thickening properties mean that it results in delicious, chewy and sticky sweets.
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Ingredients:
- ¼ cup Gond
- ½ cup ghee
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 cup mava
- 2 ½ cup dry coconut
- 2 tbsp Chopped cashews
- 2 tbsp Chopped almonds
- 1 tsp Cardamom powder
- ½ tsp Nutmeg powder
- 1 tsp Dry ginger powder
- ¼ cup water
Method
- In a heavy bottom pan, add dry desiccated coconut and roast it on low flame until it turns light brown.
- In batches fry the gond in hot ghee and then crush the gond using a bowl or your hand.
- In an oven or dry pan, roast the cashews and almonds until evenly browned and add them to the mixing bowl.
- Then add the mava to a pan and roast it until the ghee separates before adding the mava to the bowl with the nuts and mix it all together.
- In a pan, make a sugar syrup until it reaches a stringy consistency.
- Then turn off the gas and add cardamom powder, nutmeg powder and dry ginger powder and mix well.
- Add th crushed Gond pak mixture into the sugar syrup and combine thoroughly.
- In a greased pan, turn it out and flatten it with a spatula.
- Let it set and then cut it into pieces and serve.
