Traditional Hindustani North Indian Dessert Recipes

These traditional North Indian dessert recipes come to us from the halcyon days of the British Empire and the great East India Company.

Enjoy Hindustani desserts once served at afternoon teas, official functions, and family celebrations in India. They're wonderfully delicious and perfect for serving on any occasion.

Traditional North Indian Dessert Recipes

Khaki Kook Book (1917)

Gulab Jamuns

For this traditional North Indian dessert recipe, take a pound of rice flour. If one cannot obtain rice flour use common flour.

Put it in a bowl. Crack into it two eggs, add a little salt, and enough coconut and coconut milk to make a soft dough. Use Baker's fresh coconut for this. Knead well and cover for a little while with a damp cloth.

After a while mold this dough into little balls about the size and shape of pecans (or larger, if preferred). You will have to keep your fingers oiled while doing this. Fry them as you would doughnuts. Let stand until perfectly cold.

Weigh them, and for every pound take a quarter of a pound of white sugar. Make this sugar into a syrup. When thick, put in the gulab jamuns and stir them for a few minutes. When they are well frosted, remove. Spread out on oiled paper. These are really very nice.

Any kind of little cakes and nuts can be frosted the same way. The syrup should be allowed to cool a little before the cakes are put in it.

Frosted Bananas

Use rather green bananas for this traditional North Indian dessert recipe. Peel, slice crosswise, sprinkle lightly with salt and fry. Be careful to keep them whole and not to burn them.

Allow them to get thoroughly cold, then frost as directed for Gulab Jamuns (above).

Orange Marmalade

This marmalade recipe can be made from oranges or lemons or grapefruit, or by combining the three, or by combining any two of them.

Either slice the fruit very thinly or run it through a meat grinder. For every cup of fruit take three cups of water. Let it stand for twenty-four hours.

Then boil it in the same water until the rinds are soft. Let stand another twenty-four hours in the same water.

Then measure again and for every cup of mixture take a cup of sugar. The best results are obtained if not over four cupfuls are boiled at a time. Boil rapidly.

If citrus fruits are boiled slowly, they are apt to grow dark and strong. If oranges are used alone for this marmalade, they must be sour.

For this traditional North Indian dessert recipe, a good combination is four oranges, two lemons, and half a grapefruit.

Fruit Cheese Confection

The fruit part first wants to be reduced to a pulp. Then take equal parts of fruit pulp and sugar, with as much butter as you feel you dare use.

If you feel that you dare not use any butter, use Crisco (vegetable shortening) with salt.

Cook down until it becomes a paste that can be cut with a knife. It must cook very slowly.

Sometimes when nearly finished nuts are added. In apricot cheese, the kernels are used. They must be blanched and minced.

Guava cheese is perhaps the finest, as the flavor improves much with cooking.

Carrot Cheese Confection

Boil a pound of carrots until very tender. Then mash them perfectly smooth. Mix with them a pound of sugar, a tablespoonful of butter, and the juice of a large lemon. Also add a few cardamon seeds.

Cook over a slow fire until the mixture hardens into a paste. Add a little more butter just before removing from the fire. Press into shallow pans and cut in neat squares or diamonds like fudge.

Banana Cheese Confection

Take a dozen ripe bananas, skin them, and mash them up with a cup of cream of wheat and a cup of sugar; also add a tablespoonful of butter and a little cinnamon.

Cook slowly for about three hours in a double boiler. When cold cut as you would cheese.

Fools / Milk and Fruit Beverage

Pare, slice, and stew the fruit until it is quite soft. Strain through a fine sieve or coarse muslin. Add to the pulp as much sugar as is desired and enough water to make it pour easily.

Boil for a few minutes and turn into a jug.

When ready to drink it, fill the glass about half full of the fruit mixture and then fill with rich milk. Add ice. These "fools" are very nutritious and refreshing. Often in the hot weather one cares for little else.

Crow's Nest Fritters

For this traditional North Indian dessert recipe, pare and cut in very small strips a pound of sweet potatoes. Steam until a little soft, but not entirely so. Make a batter of flour, two eggs, and water.

Put a tablespoonful of batter on a well-greased griddle, then a tablespoonful of the potatoes. Cover these with another tablespoonful of batter. When done on one side, turn. Eat with melted brown sugar and butter or with syrup.

Breadcrumb Balls

Mix dry breadcrumbs and grated coconut together, and a few raisins, too, if liked. Take a cup of sugar and half a cup of water, and boil. When syrup has reached the stage that it forms a hard ball in water, pour over the breadcrumb mixture.

Mold as if making popcorn balls. If one likes, these may be rolled in powdered sugar afterward. These are also a very fine sweet for social and missionary functions of all kinds.

Sooji / Cream of Wheat Halwa

Fry a cupful of cream of wheat in half a cup of butter or Crisco (shortening). When it begins to have a nutty flavor and to be slightly brown, add three cups of water and one cup of sugar and a few of the small inside seeds of the cardamon. Boil slowly until it forms a thick rich paste.

Press into square cake pans and sprinkle over the top minced nuts and also raisins, if desired. Cut in squares like fudge. Very good and wholesome.

Sujee Biscuits / Cookies

One pound of cream of wheat and one pound of sugar mixed intimately; then add half a cup of lard or Crisco and knead awhile. Form into little balls and shape the balls as desired.

Usually, they are simply flattened out into squares. Bake a light brown. Be careful that they are not crowded in the pan.

Mrs. Beeton's Traditional North Indian Dessert Recipes

The Book of Household Management (1861)

Indian Fritters

Ingredients: 3 tablespoonfuls of flour, boiling water, the yolks of 4 eggs, the whites of 2, hot lard or clarified dripping, jam or marmalade.

Mode:

Put the flour into a basin, and pour over it sufficient boiling water to make it into a stiff paste, taking care to stir and beat it well, to prevent it getting lumpy.

Leave it a little time to cool, and then break into it (without beating them at first) the yolks of 4 eggs and the whites of 2, and stir and beat all well together.

Have ready some boiling lard, oil, or butter; drop a dessertspoonful of batter in at a time, and fry the fritters of a light brown. They should rise so much as to be almost like balls.

Serve on a dish, with a spoonful of preserve or marmalade dropped between each fritter.

This is an excellent dish for a hasty addition to dinner, if a guest unexpectedly arrives, it being so easily and quickly made, and it is always a great favorite. Sufficient for 4 or 5 persons. Seasonable at any time.

Indian Trifle

Ingredients: 1 quart of milk, the rind of 1/2 large lemon, sugar to taste, 5 heaped tablespoonfuls of rice flour, 1 oz of sweet almonds, 1/2 pint of custard.

Method:

Boil the milk and lemon rind together until the former is well flavored; take out the lemon rind and stir in the rice flour, which should first be moistened with cold milk, and add sufficient loaf sugar to sweeten it nicely.

Boil gently for about 5 minutes, and keep the mixture stirred; take it off the fire, let it cool a little, and pour it into a glass dish.

When cold, cut the rice out in the form of a star, or any other shape that may be preferred; take out the spare rice, and fill the space with boiled custard.

Blanch and cut the almonds into strips; stick them over the trifle, and garnish it with pieces of brightly colored jelly, or preserved fruits, or candied citron. Sufficient for one trifle.

About the Traditional North Indian Dessert Recipes

Enjoy the delicious taste of homemade fritters and marmalade, or a unique Indian-style trifle made with rice flour, almonds, colored jellies, and fruit. With those wonderful ingredients, it simply has to taste amazing.

Also enjoy gulab jamuns, halwa, fruit cheeses, frosted bananas, and sujee biscuits. Your family will love trying these delicious confectionery treats that reflect their eastern influence.

These sweet dishes made from these traditional North Indian dessert recipes are excellent for serving after a curry dinner or at a family get-together when you want to enjoy a special treat.