Last month, we celebrated TH's birthday and I prepared methu vada, kheer and Jalebi for him. Preparing a chocolate cake was in my To-Do list, but surprisingly, he asked me to prepare some traditional sweets this time. With the blank mind, searched some sweet recipes from my mom's recipe collections and found this Jalebi. She had given a title as Jilebi(This is how we call in Tamil).With her notes and ingredients, I prepared around 25 jalebis so that I can send to TH's friends.
Jalebi is an Indian sweet which can be served warm or cold. Many of us will get confuse with Jalebi and Jangiri as they both sometimes look similar. They both look like sugar coated funnel cake. But they differ in taste and jalebi is more crisp than jangiri. Jalebi is prepared using maida(all purpose flour) and it needs fermentation time whereas jangiri is prepared using urid dal and it can be prepared immediately after grinding the batter. Hope these differences are enough to avoid the confusion.
I am here showing you the instant version of Jalebi which reduces the fermentation time of 12 hours by adding yeast to it.
Basic Information:
Preparation Time: 20 minutes
Idle Time: 1 hour
Cooking Time: 30-40 minutes
Makes: 25 medium size jalebis
Ingredients:
For Jalebi:
All purpose flour/Plain Flour/ Maida - 1 cup
Besan flour/gram flour - 1 tablespoon
Cornflour - 1 tablespoon
Yogurt - 4 tablespoons
Active dry yeast - 1 teaspoon
Ghee - 1 teaspoon, melted
Sugar - 1 teaspoon
Salt - a pinch
Warm water - 3/4 cup or as required
Yellow food colour - 2 pinch or as required
Oil - for deep frying
For Sugar Syrup:
Sugar - 1 cup
Water - 1 cup
Green cardamom - 2 nos, crushed
Saffron - 3 strands
Lemon Juice - 1 teaspoon
Method:
For Jalebi:
1) In a mixing bowl, add sifted all purpose flour, gram flour and corn flour. Mix well and add yogurt, melted ghee, sugar, salt and food colour. Mix well without forming lumps.
2) Make a small well in the centre of the flour mixture and add active dry yeast and warm water.
3) Mix well till you find NO lumps. There should not be lumps and the batter should be smooth.
4) Cover using cling wrap and keel the mixing bowl in warm place for an hour.
5) After one hour, mix the batter again. If it is very thick, add very little water and make the batter to correct consistency. i.e., the batter should be thick at the same time in pouring consistency.
6) Spoon the batter into the ziploc bag/Icing bag/ketchup bottle/Jalebi
bottle. Make sure the hole made in the ziploc bag or nozzle in the
icing bag is small. I used Icing bag with small nozzle.
7) Now, the batter is ready for making jalebi.
For Sugar Syrup:
1) In a saucepan, add sugar and water. Allow it to boil.
2) Add crushed cardamom, saffron and lemon juice. Mix well.
3) After 5-10 minutes turn the flame off when the sugar syrup came to the sticky consistency.
4) Try to keep this syrup in low temperature. OR you can reduce the flame to very low instead of turning off the flame. It is absolutely your choice.
For Making Jalebi:
1) Heat oil in wide pan. Make sure the flame is in between low to medium for easy preparation.
2) To check the temperature of oil, drop a tiny drop of batter into the oil. It should immediately come to the surface of the oil without changing the colour.
3) Take icing bag, squeeze out the batter into close concentric circle motion from inside to outside at same speed.
4) Deep fry till both the sides of Jalebi becomes golden and crisp. They became crisp easily in this instant version.
5) Take out the jalebi's from oil and keep them in plate covering with kitchen tissue for 10 seconds.
6) After 10 seconds, put them into the sugar syrup. Keep them in sugar syrup for a minute. In between flip the jabeli so that sugar syrup coats well on both the side.
7) Transfer to a plate and Serve hot or warm.
Note:
1) You can also use rapid rise yeast in place of active dry yeast. You can also make the yeast by dissolving in 3/4 cup of warm water for 10 minutes or until creamy and bubbly for proving before preparing the batter.
2) Instead of crushed green cardamom, ground cardamom can be used. Instead of Oil, Ghee can also be used for frying the jalebi.
3) Make sure to maintain the correct temperature to get crispy Jalebi. Otherwise the jalebi becomes soggy. If you feel the oil becomes more hot, then reduce the flame, wait for some time to bring the oil to the required temperature.
4) You can get Jalebi bottles in shops which helps you more than icing/ziploc bag.
Sending this cake to Vardhini's Sinful Delights event.
