A Guide To Indian Sweets

A few of weekends ago I celebrated one of the biggest Indian festivals of the year. I won't go into the specifics because I wrote about it last year but it was fabulous as expected- 2 and a half days of colour, culture and a LOT of food. Hence I'm writing about Indian sweets, because in my opinion they are not very well known, and totally underrated. These are by no means the only sweets; different parts of India emphasise different ones, but these are the ones we particularly eat:

Barfi- the basic Barfi is a very creamy, milky and sweet. There are a lot of different variations- my personal favourites are the coconut ones (branded 'the pink ones' by me when I was little) and the chocolate covered ones. 

Kalakand- these are definitely up there at the top. They are like barfi but less dense, therefore are lighter and more crumbly, but equally creamy!

Gulab Jamun- my absolute favourites. Cream of the crop. They are like little balls of heaven soaked in syrup. They are the type of sweets which taste better home made, so it's always a good day when I come home and my mum has made them fresh (not that this happens very often). Best served with some mango ice cream.

Jalebi- these are probably the most well-known sweets from my list and in my opinion the worst tasting! They are incredibly sweet, syrupy and crunchy, which I think is just a weird combination. I haven't had one in years (hence the lack of a photo)- maybe I should give them another chance...

Ladoo- these are slightly different to the others because they are fried (and you can definitely taste it). These have the texture of those little polystyrene balls you get from packaging, and look like yellow versions of them too.

Rasgulla- these were the sweets of my childhood! These are hard to explain- they are very dense and the syrup tastes kind of ... floral. Like rose water. Not so keen on them any more but still a good shout.

So there's a break down of a few Indian sweets. There are just so many varieties and they taste so good (the downside is one probably has a quarter of your fat and sugar- I dread to think of the damage I did to my body over the weekend) but too good to resist. It's even harder if in India, where you'll find a sweet shop approximately every 10m, so I guess it's good for my health that I don't live there!

Also I'm sorry I don't have pictures of all of them. It's mostly because we ate them before I could actually get a picture. But you can google image the gaps if you're that interested!

Have a wild weekend ☺