Adadiyapak - Healthy Gujarati Sweet

Anyone who has spent at least a couple winters in Gujarat, would be familiar with the traditional Gujarati sweet called "Adadiyapak". Made with Adad(Udad) Flour, and filled with naturally healthy ingredients, its one sweet that is really good for you and your body! It's especially made in winter, due to availability of ingredients, but nowadays, you can find these at any grocery store around the year. They are filled with the goodness of health and richness of taste, but when they come packaged in a "stainless-steel dabba" all the way from India, marked with the stamp of being labeled as Mom's homemade Adadiya, its extra-special, healthy and extremely delicious. So here's sharing with you my granny's recipe for Adadiyapak, executed perfectly by none other than Mom!

Ingredients
500gm black gram flour (adad no lot)
50gm besan (chickpea flour - optional)
450gm ground sugar
400gm + 200gm ghee (clarified butter)
1 cup milk

Spices
few pieces of edible gum (gaund)
50 gm ginger powder
50 gm ganthoda powder (optional)
25 gm vasanu (optional, skip it if you can't find it)
100gm cashew nuts + almonds - (crushed coarsely into powder)

Method
Mix 100gm ghee, milk, black gram flour and besan and keep it aside for 3 hours. Once it cools down a little, pass this flour mixture through a filter (sieve), to form granular flour mixture (looks like Sooji or Semmolina), and keep it aside.

Take another 100gm ghee and fry the edible gum in a pan on high flame; then let it cool for a couple mins, and grind it in a blender to form coarse granules.

Take 400gm ghee in a pan and add black gram flour in it. Stir it continuously on low flame till flour becomes golden brown. Add ginger powder, vasanu and ganthoda powder to this, and mix well.

When it turns golden brown, and the flour looks properly roasted, and starts giving out a nice smell, about 10 mins or so, remove it from the flame. Let it cool a little (about 2 mins), then add the edible gum powder into it. Stir it well and mix properly. Then allow the entire thing to cool for about 20 mins.

Finally, add the sugar and cashew-almond powder into it and mix it well.

Take a deep steel thali (or non-stick flat pan), grease it with a little ghee, and spread the mixture into the thali evenly, levelling the surface.

Garnish it with slivered almonds or pistachios, if you like, then let it set completely for about 10 minutes. Now cut it into squares and keep them out, uncovered for about an hour.

Once cooled enough, you can store the Adadiya squares in an air-tight container, and keep it refrigerated for about 20-30 days. Just let it come to room temperature before eating; one small piece a day is a great way to keep yourself healthy, as long as the supplies last!:)

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