Vegan Jalebi Recipe

As the festival season kicks off, we look forward to spend time with our loved ones and enjoying great food. Be it Hanukkah, Diwali, Thanksgiving, or Christmas, food manages to bring everyone togather!

Each year, around this time, I start to feel nostalgic, wanting to go back to my childhood when Diwali preparations would start weeks in advance – shopping for new Lord Ganesha and Lakshmi Devi idols and buying silver coins for gifts (Silver is considered to bring good luck in Indian tradition). We'd buy new clothes, dry fruits, and ingredients to make sweets at home. My mother would start making ghee mava (solidified milk dough) for special sweets. Our home would be filled with the sweet aroma of cooked milk, cardamom, saffron, and spices from deep-frying savory dishes like mathari bhujia. My father and brother would hang lights and decorations around the house while my mother would prepare diyas (candles) with cotton wick and oil.

When I came to America, I retained all the festivities and my family loved the special treats I'd make. Most Indian traditional sweets are dairy-based. As I became vegan, I wanted to find ways to make traditional sweets without dairy. I'm here to share some of the recipes I've perfected over the years.

Hot, crisp, and dripping with sugar, Jalebi is a treat for all sweet-lovers!

Ingredients:

For Jalebi

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tb spoon besan (gram flour)
• 1\2 cup vegan yogurt (cashews)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 2 teaspoon oil
• For frying 2 cups Crisco shortening or sunflower oil
• Note: For deep frying sweet dessert, I find it best to use Crisco vegetable shortening because coconut oil or other oils can have overpowering flavors at times. However, it depends on the dish and your preference.

For sugar syrup

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• Pinch of saffron threads
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon green cardamom powder

Method

Prepare the jalebi batter first:

1. Mix the all-purpose flour and besan (gram flour) in a bowl.

2. Add vegan yogurt and 1\4 cup water to make a batter, it should be pancake consistency.

3. Add oil and lemon juice.

4. Use a hand mixer, or beat with a wooden spoon, to aerate the batter. This step is important to make crispy Jalebis.

5. Cover and let it ferment over night for up to 12 hours.

Note: You can add yellow food color to batter now, my choice is to keep it natural, and later we can add saffron to syrup, which gives it a nice look and flavor.

Now, prepare the sugar syrup:

6. Heat water in pan, add sugar, keep on medium heat and let it thicken.

7. Simmer the syrup until it attains one string consistency.

8. Add saffron and cardamom powder. Keep it aside.

9. Heat oil on a medium flame in a 6" or 9" flat heavy bottom pan.

10. Stir the fermented batter and put it in a sauce bottle with hole or use pastry bag cut a 2.5 mm hole.

11. Make concentric circles. Move from inside to outside to make perfect Jalebis. Fry both sides until crisp and golden in color.

12. Drain on paper towel first, or soak directly in the warm sugar syrup. Make sure syrup is warm only not very hot. It will take 2-3 mins for the Jalebis to soak up all the syrup.

13. Remove the Jalebis from the syrup and use a plate lined with butter paper to soak up any access syrup.

14. Garnish with chopped pistachios or silver foil.

Serve hot & enjoy!