Balushai

Bangladeshi style balushai is one of the dry sweets I am crazy for !! The reason I’m saying Bangladeshi style , because though this sweet is common in every country of the subcontinent , Bangladeshi version is little different as nutmeg flovred maowa/ khoya is stuffed inside the sweet, making it more flavorful.

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour
4 tbl spoon melted ghee
3-4 tbl spoon yogurt ( start with 3 tbl spoon), cold
Pinch of baking powder
Pinch of salt

For the sugar syrup :

1 cup sugar
3/4 th cup water
1/2 tea spoon lemon juice ( prevents crystalization of sugar)
2 cardamoms , 1 little stick of cinnamon

For stuffing

khoya/ maowa
1/4 th tea spoon nutmeg

Other ingredients:

Oil for deep frying

Procedure:

1. Make a dough with the ingredients mentioned above . It will be a flaky , little tight dough . Don’t try to make it sost . Just everything should be come together . Not dry but not soft either . If you think the ingredients are not coming together , you may add little yogurt . But control youself adding too much yogurt to make it a soft dough . The dough need to be little hard .
Don’t knead the dough like bread .

2. Cover the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes .

3. In the mean time heat the oil for deep frying in medium low flame , prepare sugar syrup and the khoya. If you dont have khoya , make it with powder milk .
For that take half a cup of powder milk , add 2 tbl spoon ghee and 1/3 rd cup liquid milk/ heavy cream . Now microwave it for first 30 seconds and stir , microave again for 30 seconds . Check and stir like so , so that the khoya must not get burnt . The liquid will dry out a little , don’t try to dry out completely as it may make the khoya burnt . just when little wet , is perfect . It will solidify when cools down . You can do the full process in the stove too , until everything comes together and make a doughy texture .
Cool down the khoya and crumble it , mix with nutmeg powder .

4. For the sugar syrup , make a medium thick syrup , must not be too thick ( the syrup won’t get inside the sweets) nor too thin ( the sweets will become soggy) . It should be liquidy but thick .

5. Now take the flour dough . Make small balls from the dough . You don’t have to knead it . Just make balls and stuff maowa inside . Seal the opening and make small flat ball . The balls will get bigger while frying , so don’t make them big in size .

6. Lower the stove and fry the balushais in hot oil at low flame for 15-20 minutes until red . The balushais need to be well fried , that helps to soak the syrup nicely. Immediately transfer to the warm syrup and let it soak the syrup for 2-3 minutes .

7. Take them out from the syrup and dredge over dry maowa . For dry mowa , take powder milk and ghee and make bread crumb like texture . Strain through a strainer .

Ready .