Desserts/Traditional Sweets/Dessert recipes/How to make desserts

Desserts are sweet courses often had at the end of a meal. Desserts can be baked, fried, frozen, or chilled. Or it can be simply a fruit, wine, or cheese.

It varies from cakes and custards to ice creams, puddings, pastries, pies, tarts, etc depending on the region. Though it is essentially served as the last course, it can be had anytime all around the year.

In India, dessert is not had as a matter of course. For most of us, our everyday food does not include desserts, unless we have some event like a birthday or some festival. The most common dessert is the payasam or kheer which is had hot or cold, and the kesari or sheera.

Most Indian desserts use ghee or clarified butter. Cardamom powder/Elaichi is the common flavoring agent. Other flavorings include saffron, rose water, and kewra.

Cashew nuts and kismis/dried grapes are widely used to temper or garnish. Almonds and pistachios are also used to a great extent.

For sweetening normally sugar or jaggery is used. Traditional Indian sweets often call for boiling the sugar syrup to the string consistency. Though it can be intimidating at first, it is very easy to master once you get the hang of it.

Indian sweets can be broadly classified into ladoos, barfis, halwas, milk sweets, and payasam or kheers. There are a lot more other than this, varying from region to region. I shall deal in-depth on the preparation of these with troubleshooting tips wherever needed.

Apart from this, there are a whole lot of desserts around the world where they are considered as the last course in a meal. Puddings and cheesecakes are very popular and so are cakes and mousses.

Clearly, the invention of sugar brought about a whole lot of desserts, thanks to the Indians 🙂 .

So on this page, you will find all the Indian desserts, as well as from around the world under the following heads.