Baked Gujiya ( karanji )

Yep, that's right. I tried baking the gujiyas instead of deep frying to make it low calorie. 'D' loves sweets and hates anything that even mentions 'healthy' or 'low calorie'. He automatically thinks that it will taste bad.


When I gave one of these gujiya's to him ( and mind you I had tried it for the first time after giving up on it when I tried making them the traditional way a good 8 yrs back), I was sure that he is going to hate it, yet, I asked expectantly if they weren't 'that bad' for non-deep-fried gujiya and that he should expect it to be different than the deep fried ones and on and on. He just ate it and said - not bad, not bad, infact its good !!! That's a big complement coming from a sweet lover but 'low calorie' hater :-) He gave it a thumbs up and that its good enough to make ot for Diwali.

For making 24- 25 gujiyas, you will need:

for filling: ( I used the following but you can make a filling of your choice or taste)

One cup rawa/suji/semolina

half cup - dessicated coconut

half cup - milk powder

1tsp- elaichi( cardmom) pdr

sugar - half cup or as per taste

handful of chopped dry fruits of your choice

For Gujiya:

One and half cup - maida

3tbsp- rawa

2tbsp- ghee

3/4 cup milk

Heat a Pan and add rawa and roast on medium heat till it is slightly pink. Turn off the heat, let it cool and add the coconut, sugar. milk powder, and elaichi pdr and keep it aside.

Mix maida, rawa, ghee and milk in another plate and knead a semisoft dough. Make 23- 25 balls of it and cover with a wet cloth.

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line a baking tray with baking paper or you can use a greased tray if you don't mind increasing the fat content. Take the balls of the dough and start rolling them out one by one into small puri like shapes. put one to one and half spoon of the filling in the centre of the rolled out puri and wet the corner outer lining of the puri with some water and fold it over to make a gujiya shape and press the ends with a fork and fold it slightly so they can't open during baking or you can also use th Gujiya moulds. Put these gujiya's on the baking tray and bake for about 15-20 minutes or untill they start turning pink. Take them out, cool and store in airtight containers.

The total fat used was only 2tbsp for so many gujiyas and it tasted great too ! I didn't even brush them with ghee before pushing them in the oven - can't get better than this :-)