Here Is Your Foolproof Guide To Making The Tricky But Delicious indian dessert, the Mysore Pak

A popular and delicious indian dessert, the Mysore pak originates from Karnataka’s Mysore city in south India. It calls for only three ingredients - gram flour, ghee and sugar. But it's one of the more complex desserts to make and get right. It calls for scientific precision and a lot of hard work on the part of your arm, given the amount of mixing and stirring that it needs. But when done right, it has a rich, luxurious flavour and melts easily in the mouth, being totally worth all that effort. So follow this detailed guide to get the basics right and have some heartwarming Mysore pak on your hands.

Ingredients:

• 200 grams sugar
• 100 grams gram flour (besan)
• 200 grams Ghee (clarified butter)
• ½ cup water

Directions:

Measure all the three ingredients, making sure they are exactly right.

Sieve the gram flour twice. This will break up any lumps so that you don't have any trouble later in the cooking process.

Grease a pan with ghee. Set aside.

In a pan or kadhai, add the sugar and water. Heat over medium heat and stir continuously until the sugar has dissolved.

In another pan, add the ghee and place it on the stove over a low fame. Let the ghee simmer.

Once the sugar solution comes to a boil, add the gram flour to it. Add it one spoon at a time, whisking well after each spoonful is added. Let the first spoonful mix completely and dissolve like the sugar did. Then add another spoon. And so on. By the end, all the gram flour should be thoroughly mixed in with the sugar syrup.

Now add the ghee in parts. First add one spoonful of hot ghee to the mixture. The mixture will start to bubble and froth. So move quickly, mixing the ghee with the mixture. Like this, add all the ghee, mixing constantly as you do. You might want to wear gloves if you're not as experienced because there’s going to be a lot of sizzling and splattering.

Keep cooking the mixture till the ghee separates and the mixture starts to bubble. It will also leave the sides of the pan or kadhai. Keep cooking and keep scraping the bottom of the pan as you do, else the bottom will get burnt. So keep stirring and scraping.

Once the mixture has come together in one mass, and starts to bubble, turn off the heat.

Immediately pour the mixture into the greased pan. It will fall in as one chunk. Level it with a spatula or the back of a small bowl.

Once it has cooled, invert the pan onto a serving plate or tray. Tap the top of the pan and the Mysore pak will easily fall out. Cut the chunk into small squares. Serve warm.

Or store in an airtight container for 10 days.

Notes, tips and tricks:

Remember, as soon as the sugar syrup starts to boil, you have to add in the gram flour. As soon as the gram flour is incorporated, add the ghee. And as soon as the mixture starts to become a chunk and leaves the sides, turn off the heat. It's easy to fall into the trap of overcooking. But you must be mindful. If you cook too much at any stage, you will have a very hard Mysore pak.

Although it's important to know when to stop, you don't want to stop prematurely either. Or it won't set and you'll have to transfer it back to the pan and cook some more. The best thing to do is see how much strength is going into stirring the mixture. Your hand will be able to tell when it gets easier and you’ll instinctively know when it's ready.

When stirring, your hand has to move quickly. You cannot let it stick to the pan for too long, or the bottom will start to brown or burn. Keep stirring since this also affects how soon your mixture is made.

If you want, you can roast the gram flour for a few minutes before adding it to the sugar syrup. It doesn't affect the process at all though, so only do so if you really want to.