The Many Stories Surrounding The Origin and Proliferation of Laddoos Through India

Laddoos are a crowd pleasing dessert across the length and breadth of the country. They’re easy to make and offer a lot of variety. Here’s a deep dive into the beloved dish.

Laddoos are one of India’s favorite desserts. They're often distributed as prasadam in temples and are a mainstay at most festivals. They're easy to make, allow for a lot of versatility and variety, are attractive and eye-catching, and create an enjoyable experience when eating. Among the large variety of laddoos found in India are the motichoor laddoo, til laddoo and nariyal or coconut laddoo.

It’s believed that in the old days, laddoos were served as medicine. The 4th-century BC doctor Susruta recorded using laddoos as an antiseptic. He made his medicinal laddoos using sesame seeds coated with honey, jaggery and peanuts, creating a rather healthy and immunity-boosting treat. As culinary researcher and director of the award-winning show Chak Le India Shubhra Chatterji says in an interview, “As per the available records, Susruta included herbs, seeds and medicinal edibles into laddoos with a little bit of honey. Even K.T. Achaya mentions about Susruta in his book [A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food].”

Another story about the laddoo is that soldiers of the Chola Empire would carry laddoos with them when going to fight wars, since they were considered a symbol of good luck. And according to a story from the east, when a vaid’s (Ayurveda practitioner) assistant dropped ghee into a medicine, he made small spheres to cover it up. The rounded balls were then used as medicine.

Another story concerns a Kanpur-based sweet shop called Thaggu Ke Laddoo. Its founder Mattha Pandey was a Gandhi follower, who had sternly rejected sugar as ‘white poison’. Pandey realized that people were being tricked by the British to consume the sugar since it was easily available and cheap at the time. So instead, he came upon the idea of using a delicate balance of khoya and sooji, ensuring the beloved laddoo taste remained while offering a healthier alternative.

Fun fact: In 2015, the Guiness World Record awarded Andhra Pradesh’s Sri Bhakta Anjaneya Sweets, owned by S. Venkateswara Rao, a certificate for making the largest individual laddoo, which weighed 8,369 kg.

Here’s an easy to follow recipe of the beloved motichoor laddoo.

Ingredients:

For the sugar syrup

• 1 cup sugar
• ½ cup water
• pinch of saffron powder

For the boondi

• 1 cup besan (gram flour)
• pinch of saffron powder
• ¾ cup water
• 3 black cardamoms, seeds removed
• ½ tbsp melon seeds
• oil for deep frying
• oil or ghee to apply on the palms when shaping the ladoo

Directions:

• In a pan, mix together the sugar, saffron and water on medium heat. Keep cooking till it reaches a thread consistency. Set aside.
• Mix together the gram flour or besan, saffron and water. It should result in a flowing batter, neither too thick nor too thin. Make sure there aren't any lumps.
• Heat oil in a kadhai. Hold up a perforated spoon over the oil. Take a spoonful of the batter and pour it onto the spoon. Press down using another spoon so that the batter goes through, forming small balls.
• Fry the boondis until they’re golden, but not so much that they become crisp. Once the oil stops sizzling, remove the boondis.
• Transfer the boondis straight into the sugar syrup. Once in the syrup, you’ll notice that the boondis start to soften.
• Blend the boondis and syrup, adding some water. Pulse until they're small and irregular but not so much that they become a fine powder.
• Add the melon seeds and cardamom seeds and mix well.
• Coat your palms with ghee and start shaping the ladoos. You have to move fast, while the mixture is still warm. Once it cools down, the pulsed balls become firm.
• Serve cool. Since they’re cooked in oil, they can also be refrigerated. However, if you try to refrigerate ghee-cooked ladoos they will solidify.

As Achaya writes about the motichoor laddoo in his book, “A sphere of fine globules (moti=pearls) of fried besan held together with thickened sugar syrup. A laddoo would have coarser granules. It is mentioned in Kannada literature of a few centuries ago (Shopa Shastra of Mangarasa, written in 1516 AD), and as a food item of Bihar about a century ago. The sculpted or painted figure of Ganesha frequently holds in one hand what appears to be balls of motichur, as in the great Lingaraja temple of Bhubaneswar (as recorded by Ayodhya Prasad Shah in Life in Medieval Orissa)."