Holi is a festival of colour and besides covering ourselves in powdered paint then we should also serve them great dishes and essentially desserts. One of the nicest is gujiya.
Gujiya or stuffed dumplings are one of my favourite holi special foods. These are most famous in the north of the country but it a sweet dish which everybody can enjoy. In essence it is a sweet of a crisp, flaky pastry filled with a sweet khoya and a dry fruits stuffing. Add this dish to your dessert selection for the holi season.
The recipe we have takes 40 minutes to do with 20 minutes preparation time. For 20 servings:-
For the filling
For the dough
Making Gujiya
Take a bowl, add all purpose flour and water to make a soft dough. To accentuate the taste of this traditional recipe, add some ghee into the dough.
To make the dough soft, knead well by sprinkling some water. Once the dough attains the perfect consistency, keep it aside for 60 minutes. In the meantime, take a deep-fry pan then saute the khoya and semolina till it turns golden and keep it aside to cool.
Add sugar, green cardamom and soaked almonds to the cooled khoya and mix well. To make this stuffing even more delicious, add some dry roasted nuts and raisins, this will add a nice crunch to the Gujiya recipe. Moving on to the next step, take two drops of ghee or refined oil and spread it well on your palms.
Then make small round balls from the dough and make a cup-like-space in the balls to fill the sumptuous stuffing. After adding the filling seal corners in such a way that it secures the stuffing while frying the Gujiya. Roll the sides as per your choice of pattern.
Heat ghee in a pan over medium flame. Fry the Gujiyas till golden brown from all the sides and serve it with some Thandai and spicy pakoras. Garnish it with some saffron strands and crushed pistachios. You can also serve it with some Rabri.
Brilliant sweet!