Non Fried Gujia

Gujia


I am not sure in which state the gujia originated in but I first saw it on www.manjulaskitchen.com. I then made a mental note to make this recipe but a rather low fat version by avoiding the deep frying part. Baking being an art I am exploring, was my default option. There are some downsides of baking such dishes and the most important one is that they could go a bit dry and next is that they may not brown well if there is not enough fat so the dish may not look appealing. For this particular dish, going dry I thought should not be much of a problem because the dumplings will be allowed to sit in sugar syrup and that would change the texture of the outer layer. For the browning, I added little sugar to the dough and I chose to dab some milk on the dumplings before baking, just a few drops on either side was adequate. I believe it is typically stuffed with dry fruits, coconut, khoya and nuts. Khoya is milk that has been heated long enough so it becomes solid. This is a long drawn process and needs some attention as the milk has to be stirred often. You probably know that I try to take sensible short cuts and adopted a rather quick version of khoya and smart use of some ingredients in my pantry. I mixed little milk with milk powder to make my khoya. The same idea can be adopted for any other dish that calls for khoya (all those dishes that I just skipped from my list simply because I could not be bothered with khoya) and the texture be adjusted with the amount of milk, will write a bit more about it in a separate post. I forgot coconut so if you want add a teaspoon to two of dessicated coconut. I have avoided deep frying so you only feel guilty about the sugar. However,although the quantity of sugar seems a lot, a very small portion only sticks to each gujia. You first taste the sweet outer coating which is crunchy too, then the nuts and then the khoya leaves a lovely taste. Now for the gujia recipe

For outer dough:
1 cup all purpose flour (maida)
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons milk

For filling:
1 cup milk powder (I used semi skimmed milk powder)
1-2 teaspoons milk
¼ cup almonds
2 tablespoon raisins
2 teaspoons sugar
For sugar syrup:
¾ cup sugar
¼-1/2 cup water
Lime juice

Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar and required water and make a dough like that for chapatti. Take some oil in your hand and knead the dough briefly and rest

To make the khoya for the filling, first put ¾ cup milk powder in a bowl and add the milk and mix. This is likely to be quite solid so now add rest of the milk powder and make a rather powdery khoya (the photo was not timed very well as I added the reminder milk powder to make the khoya little dry)

Grind almond and raisins together (I did not bother peeling almond skins because they are good for us) and mix with the khoya and add the sugar. That’s your filling ready.

Pinch a small lime sized ball of dough and roll to form a disc. I chose to use a mould that I had bought a while ago to shape the gujias but if you are doing by hand, you may have to make a close to perfect circle.

Place some filling in the centre, fold over and seal. Again, if doing by hand, you could use a fork or just your fingers to finish the edges to make it look nice

Place on baking tray about an inch apart and dab some drops of milk on each of them

Bake in a preheated oven at 180degC for 10 minutes, then turn over all of them and bake further 5 minutes

While baking make the sugar syrup by heating the sugar and water together, stirring, until you get one string consistency (when touched between thumb and index finger, you see a string of syrup). Add the lime juice so sugar does not crystallise

Allow the gujias to cool a bit and also the sugar syrup to cool and then pour the sugar syrup over the gujias while placed in box. Rest them for a while ensuring both sides are coated with sugar syrup. I put them in a box with some sugar syrup and kept shaking it every now and then.
Serve!