Til Laddoos - Sesame seeds sweet

Small sweet crispy balls of delight. One of the fastest moving sweet in our house. Easy to make , extremely popular. Specially during winter, Til or sesame is a great food for warmth. Its only because of the fact that its rumoured as being difficult to make, people prefer to buy it at sweet shops rather than make it at home. Take it from me , ITS EASY. All it needs is to understand the proportion. The weights given below work very well for me. The laddoos turn out moderately hard , enough to enjoy and not stick to the teeth. Try it this way and I promise you will never buy another til laddoo again. 

Sesame seeds 500 gms, gud or molasses ( normal gud is fine) 350 gms, 1 cup finely chopped nuts of choice ( almonds/ cashewnuts/ pistachio/ peanuts/ roasted gram dal) 2 tblsp raisins. A little ghee to line your palms with. A bowl of water to dip your fingers in and wet your hand.

Before beginning clean , wash  and dry the sesame seeds. They have a lot a grit and  washing the seeds help cleaning them thoroughly. After washing , rub with a dry napkin and spread it out to dry through and through. 

Heat a heavy pan. Roast the sesame seeds lightly for about 5 mins. Take care to not leave the seeds alone, they will start popping all over the place. Once well roasted and pinkish, keep them aside.Lightly roast the dry fruits and add to the sesame seeds.  In the same pan grate the gud , stir and melt the gud. Once melted it will start bubbling and foaming. Keep stirring . A test for to check if the syrup is done right is to let a few drops of the syrup fall into the bowl of water. The syrup will cool and harden. Just pick out the cooled hardened bits and throw them into the water again. If you hear a hard clunk, the syrup is done. Gently add in the sesame seeds and dry fruits. Mix till well coated with the gud syrup.  keep the pan warm and take out half of the mixture on a clean plate. apply ghee on your palms . carefully pick up about a spoonful of mixture at a time and roll into balls. repeat with the remaining mixture till it is all used up. Incase the mixture starts hardening up, just heat it for a minute and start rolling into laddoos.

Store in a dry airtight container. These keep well for atleast 2 weeks, or maybe longer. I have had no occasion to find out exactly how long these keep. I have difficulty holding onto them for more than 2 days .

These laddoos are made specifically on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, the 14 of January.