When you are in India, everything tastes like heaven. Besides the rich culture, taste, and heritage, Indian food and Indian desserts make India immensely famous worldwide.
Most Indian desserts are prepared using milk/ condensed milk, alongside cardamom, nuts, pistachio, cashew, walnut, and most importantly, ghee and other addictive ingredients for flavor. India has many parts and even more sweets, and as the whole of India is united, all the sweets of so many different flavors feel the same.
18 Best Desserts You Must Try Out in Indian
1. Gajar ka Halwa
Gajar means carrot, and in India, a tasty pudding is made by grating the carrot and cooking it in milk and sugar, garnished with pistachios, almonds, cashew nuts, raisins, and 2-3 spoonfuls of ghee. In Indian weddings and festive occasions, this is what is most commonly prepared. The combination of milk and carrot is a great mixture that would melt in your mouth.
2. Mysore Pak
It is a delicious fudge-like sweet made with ghee, gram flour, sugar, and obviously cardamom as its primary ingredients. This is even often served at weddings, baby showers, and other auspicious occasions. They are soft and very delicious, with the flavour of ghee and spices adding to their sweetness.
3. Gulab Jamun
Gulab jamun is made with solid milk (traditionally called khoya). These ball-shaped sweets are then dipped into the sugar syrup and often flavoured with saffron, rose water, and cardamom for an intense aroma. Besides India, its popularity has spread to other Asian countries like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Nepal. These sugary balls are smooth in texture, while the additional flavours make them even more delicious. It is a famous and most favourite dessert at Indian parties.
4. Rasmalai
This traditional Indian dessert is very juicy and creamy in texture. As its name suggests— ‘ras’ meaning juice and ‘malai’ stands for cream, it is often described as a cheesecake sans the crust. Cheese curd is the main ingredient in preparing these yellow or white balls cooked in thickened milk and sugar syrup, saffron, pistachios, and cardamom. They are soft and spongy to eat.
5. Indian Shrikhand
A creamy dish prepared from strained yogurt, having different spices like cardamom, nuts, and saffron. This is often eaten chilled and relished as an accompaniment to bread. This is a notable dish of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Shrikhand has a sweetish sour taste, which would soothe your taste buds on a hot summer day.
6. Mango Halwa
This is a delicious pulpy dessert with a pudding-like texture; mango is the main ingredient alongside sugar and ghee, and it is topped with dry fruits. It is soft and spongy with a pulpy texture and the sweetness of Mango. A perfect dessert for mango lovers.
7. Boondi ka laddoo
One of the favorite sweets of all Indians and the best for any Indian festival. This round yellow-colored ball-shaped sweet is made from chickpea flour and flavored with various dry fruits—the nutty flavor of chickpeas with saffron aroma, raisins, and a dash of cardamom.
8. Sevai
An Indian milk pudding made from roasted vermicelli and milk with some ghee for an additional aroma. It is garnished with some dry fruits; this also enriches its flavours further. It can be served steamed or chilled. A bowl of sevai after a full course meal would give you great pleasures.
9. Puran Poli
A stuffed flatbread, a typical dessert of western India, is filled with flour, split yellow gram (Chana Dal), sugar, cardamom or nutmeg powder, and ghee. It’s a popular dish of Maharashtra. It’s a blend of sweet and savoury. Puran Poli is commonly eaten with a tangy, spicy lentil dal.
10. Jalebi
A spiral-shaped dessert prepared from an all-purpose flour batter, fried, and finally dipped in syrup for a sugary effect, Jalebi is popular in India and other Asian and African countries. It has a host of other names like jilapi (Bengal), jilabi (Marathi), Z’labia (Tunisia), and Jeri (Nepal). It is eaten hot or cold, it has a chewy texture, with the taste varying according to the accompaniments you incorporate with it. Jalebi is often eaten with curd, which is the best fusion. It is also often eaten with rabri.
11. Phirni
Phirni is a north Indian dessert and is mostly eaten at Diwali and other festivals. It is not the same as payasam or rice kheer because it is made with gram rice and is eaten chilled while the latter has fine-grained whole rice as its ingredient, eaten warm or cold. It’s a mouthwatering sweet that fulfils your appetite after a complete meal.
12. Bebinca
Bebinca is a traditional dish from Goa. It is Goan pudding served mainly during Christmas. It is normally of seven layers, but the traditional Bebinca is of 16 layers in total. However, the cooking of bebinca needs patience and skills because you can’t set layer after layer without some time in between. You can either serve it fresh or serve it after refrigerating since it has a long preservation time. It is soft and sweet in taste, and a scoop of ice cream can intensify its taste.
13. Peda
It is one of the ancient traditional Indian desserts made with khoya (dairy product) and sugar, and other flavourings. This dish originated in Mathura in the 1850s and later spread worldwide. Now we can see many variations of peda, which include milk and malai (cream). It also varies in colour from white to yellowish-brown. It’s soft and creamy, and every bite can take you to a different world altogether.
14. Rasgulla
Rasgulla is a ball-shaped dumpling soaked in sugar syrup made using Indian cottage cheese (chhena) and is one of the most famous dishes of eastern India. It is soft and creamy and sometimes rubbery too. Eaten as a dessert, especially at all Bengali weddings and other occasions, it is loved all over India.
15. Shahi Tukda
It is bread pudding and is a royal dessert dish of Awadh made from bread soaked in milk or rabri topping and garnished with different dry fruits. A little food colour is added to the bread to give it a yellowish-orange colour. The blend of milk and bread gives it a soft, crispy taste.
16. Kulfi
It’s an authentic Indian frozen dessert. Kulfi means a covered cup in Persian, all because of its presentation. It is prepared by evaporating milk till it attains a creamy texture. It is a typical street food nowadays, either served shredded or frozen. Originally it came in flavours like mango, saffron, pistachio, and cardamom. But now, it is available in many varieties like apple avocado, orange, peanut, strawberry. If you are an ice cream lover, then kulfi will undoubtedly fascinate you through its creamy and dense texture.
17. Kaju Barfi
It is a diamond-shaped milk dessert prepared from cashew nuts. It has an edible silver foil as its decoration. It is smooth and delicious and gives you utter delight.
18. Kalakand
Kalakand is a simple Indian milk cake made from sweetened milk cottage and ricotta cheese. However if you make kalakand with the traditional methods, it will take very long. But, there are some speedy and easy recipes for making kalakand in which the preparation time does not exceed 15 minutes. Creamy and milky, it’s indeed an excellent dessert choice for a house party.
Read also – 10 Best Indian Foods For A Mountain Trip
Thank you very much your blog is very useful. Nice post please share some new ideas and write a post on the Shalgam Gosht recipe that will save time with easy and tasty.