Sweet Somas

I have heard often about this sweet recipe named SOMAS and have also tasted it in my childhood days. But I personally am making it for the first time. And this year I am posting this as the janmashtami special.

I am not sure if this sweet is made for janmashtami. But most of the households have this as a must for diwali sweets. My mom hasn't made this at home. So I just searched for a few recipes online and came up with my own version. I increased the sugar levels than those posted in the blogs. I felt since  sugar is used as a filling inside a dough, it needs to be on the higher end so that the dough taste and the sweet taste compensates each other. And the sweet turned out to be delicious.

This is very easy to make. I made the filling in excess and stored it in fridge and repeated the dough making and somas making for 4 days :-)

Ingredients:

For the outer layer

Maida/all purpose flour -  1 cup 

Corn flour -  1 tsp 

Oil -  1 & 1/2 tbsp 

Salt -  A generous pinch 

For filling

Pottu kadalai / fried gram dal - 1/2 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Coconut,grated - 1/2 cup

Cardamom/Elaichi - 1 

Method:

• Mix flour,corn flour, salt and oil well. Then sprinkle water to make stiff dough. Needs only near 1/4 cup water, so careful while adding water. Keep aside for at least 2 hours. 
• Grate coconut and dry roast well till the moisture evaporates. Fry in medium flame for 5 minutes until it becomes dry and wafts nice aroma. Don't let it become brown.

• Grind the fried gram dal first into a coarse rava like powder.
• Grind sugar into a fine powder with cardamom.
• Take the ground fried gram dal, sugar powder and cooled roasted coconut in a mixing bowl. 
• Mix well and keep it in a airtight container. 

• Now again knead the dough to smooth. 
• Divide into small equal sized balls. Roll each into thin pooris.
• Now spoon 1 or 1 & 1/2 tblsp of the pottukadalai powder into this and grease well the sides of the poori with water. You need not fully grease, half of the sides is good enough.
• Cover it or merge the 2 halves of the circle and seal the sides well. 
• Repeat the process for all.

• Keep covered until you deep fry.
• Deep fry in hot oil in medium flame both sides flipping in between, until golden in colour. You can fry 3 – 4 per batch. Or how much ever your kadai/oil holds. 

Sweet SOMAS is ready!!!



Notes:

• The powder made for filling can be made ahead and refrigerated. Its nice to eat it as such.
• When greasing with water, make a broad sealing to ensure that it wont open up while deep frying.
• Dough should be stiff to get crispy outer layer, so add water carefully and accordingly.