Jilipi aka Jalebi

All of us from India have a special craving for Jalebi. Me being from a Bengali family have always seen my family members having a soft corner for sweets. Jilipi - that is what we call it in Bengali, is a favourite among all the sweet lovers. I always cherish those memories when I was a kid, and all of my relatives [mashi-mesho] used to gather at my Dadu-Dida's home for summer vacation and all of used to ponder what to have for breakfast. Then came in our mind to have this weird kind of breakfast. A jalebi sandwich, two peices of bread with a hot jalebi from the corner sweet shop inside it. Yummy... it really tasted good, try it out sometime. I am not a sweet lover but still thought of preparing this sweet dish at home. Here is the preparation, it's really simple trust me.

Ingredients

• 2 cups maida (All purpose flour)
• 11/2 tbsp. fine grained semolina
• 1/4th tsp. baking powder
• 2 tbsp curd (plain yogurt)
• 11/4th cups warm water
• 1/2 tsp. saffron threads
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 2/3rd cups water
• 1/2 tsp green cardamom seeds powder
• 11/2 tbsp. kewra water or rose water
• Canola oil for frying

How to Prepare

• Mix the maida, semolina baking powder, curd and 3/4th cup of the water in a bowl (i mixed it in a ceramic bowl).
• Mix well and then add remaining water and 1/8th tsp. of saffron powder, and whisk until smooth.
• Set aside for about 2 hours to ferment.
• Whisk thoroughly before use.
• Prepare string syrup by dissolving sugar in the water. Just before the syrup is ready add cardamom powder (you can prepare the cardamom powder in a coffee grinder and remove the rough parts).  
• Heat oil in a kadhai /wok. Pour the batter into a bottle which has a small opening (i took a small plastic oil container from walmart and cut out the nozzle lengthwise to get the perfect hole for the jalebi coils). Pour the batter into the kadhai to form coils. Make a few at a time. First time it might not be the perfect shape, so try to give the pressure to the container in a consistent manner so that the flow is uniform.
• Deep fry them until they are golden and crisp all over but not brown.
• Remove from the kadhai and drain on kitchen paper and immerse in the syrup.
• Leave for at least 4-5 minutes so that they soak the syrup.
• Take them out of syrup and serve hot.