There’s always room for dessert. Especially in an Indian wedding. Even after endless servings of the 20-odd items on the menu, after which you swear to god you wouldn't eat for the next two days, you would be crawling to the dessert section. Because no one can resist the gooey goodness of a halwa or the dizzying sweetness of a rasmalai. Welcome to the world of delectable Indian desserts. If you haven't had a chance to taste any Indian dessert, here are five popular ones to get you started.

Gulab Jamun

Bowl of Gulab Jamun

This ubiquitous Indian dessert is the go-to sweet for any occasion. Made of milk solids and sugar, deep fried and doused in sugar syrup, it’s exactly the kind of thing your doctor warned you against. It is believed to be the Indian version of a Persian fritter. It is sometimes flavoured with cardamom, rosewater and saffron. Sounds yummy right?

Kesari

This South Indian dessert is a meal in itself. It is made of roasted semolina, ghee and sugar topped with cashew nuts. Its North Indian variant is called suji ka halwa; suji means semolina in Hindi. Sometimes, fruits like pineapple are added to this dish for additional flavour.

Jalebi

Awadhi Jalebi

As far as street food in most parts of India go, few desserts can beat the jalebi. These crystallised sugar spirals are made of flour, saffron and are deep fried in ghee. Believed to be brought to India by the Persian invaders, there are different versions of this dessert across the country and in parts of South Asia and even Africa. They are sometimes served with rabri (or rabdi), which is basically sweetened and thickened full cream milk topped with cardamom.

Rasgulla

Rasagolla

This sponge-like sweet soaked in sugar syrup has its origins in the Indian states of Odisha and West Bengal. The spongy texture is because of the use of cottage cheese and semolina. It is a tricky dessert to make but thankfully, it is easily available in most restaurants and sweet shops across the country.

Mysore Pak

Mysore Pak

We saved the best for last! This South Indian dessert has so much ghee that it melts in your mouth. It is made of gram flour, ghee (tonnes of it) and sugar. Once it cools, it is cut into smaller slabs and you can pop them into your mouth as a snack. The story goes that a cook at the Mysore Palace (in present-day Karnataka in South India) first made this dish and he called it Mysore Pak, for lack of a better name, pak meaning sweet.

So now that you know that these awesome desserts exist, how about setting up your Satara dining table and enjoying them with your friends and family.

 

Image Sources:

Gulab Jamun - © Ali A. Fazal / Wikimedia Commons, via Wikimedia Commons

Jalebi - By Soumyadeep Paul (flikr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Rasgulla - By Archbik (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Mysore Pak - By Charles Haynes (originally posted to Flickr as Mysore Pak) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons