It’s that time of the year when the stars and cribs come out to play. The decorations are set up, lights twinkle in home windows and kitchens get busy the traditional Goan sweets. The Goan Christmas sweets tray or the consuada (kuswar in Konkani) is a necessary phase of the festival.
These Goan sweets pay tribute to the considerable fare accessible in the state, particularly coconut, black coconut jaggery (madachem godd), and cashew nuts, amongst others.
It is believed that 21 sweets and some savoury objects embellish the Goan Christmas sweets platter – crispy mandares (rice chips), puffy voddes (deep fried candy bread), marzipan (a cashew and sugar sweet, commonly colored and formed to seem like fruits), bolinhas (small desserts akin to coconut cookies, made coconut, sugar, semolina, egg yolks and butter), nankhatais (sugar, butter and flour blended to create a white, snowy-looking cookie), and baathk (a wealthy coconut cake with pastry lattice work on it) amongst others.
This sugar-laden Goan Christmas sweets tray is sent out to neighbours and friends and offered to visitors so they can partake in the Christmas bounty. The kuswar is a matter of pride in many families, and are distinguished by the quality and the quantity on the plate.
Here’s a glimpse of some of the Goan sweets in this season.
Bebinca – The Queen Of Goan Sweets
This dish is the yummiest! Each layer is baked one after the other and caramelized. This is one of the standard sweets of Goa and is full of goodness. The Bebinca is soft, organized with sugar, ghee, flour, egg yolk and coconut milk; on occasion served with almonds and ice cream. We bet you cannot resist this Goan delicacy!
Perad
This guava cheese (Portuguese: goiabada) is like the aam papad – sweet, soft, chewy with a mild tartness. Guavas have herbal pectin – acquired after straining the seeds – which works as a thickening agent for this darkish red/pink sweet.
Simply made with sugar, lime, butter (or ghee), it is some other dish that requires consistent stirring. Perad is additionally regarded as guava cheese. It can additionally be eaten like a jam; if eliminated earlier than it is utterly cooked, the thinner consistency makes it less complicated to spread.
Doce – The Most Preferred Of All The Goan Sweets
Doce de Grão (sweet grain) is a fudge made with chana dal (split gram), coconut and jaggery. It has some ghee and cardamom. The chana dal and coconut combination is cooked with sugar – and stirred always – until it leaves the facets of the pan.
Then, some ghee and cardamom are introduced in and the warm combination is left to cool in a container or on a marble slab. It is reduced into squares or diamonds and now and then scored on the top with a fork. It has a skinny dry crust and is gentle within. out of the other Goan sweets, doce is also popular in catholic households during weddings and other occasions as well.
Pinagr/ Pinaca
Among the other Goan Christmas sweets like dodol, bebinca, bolinhas, batk, etc, Pinagr is yet another popular Christmas sweet made with rice, coconut and jaggery being the main ingredients. Traditionally, pinagr is made with roasted rice and then ground finely. Do give it a try!
Dodol
This toffee-like candy is made from coconut milk, jaggery and red rice. It has the texture of a pudding and is now and sometimes studded with cashew nuts. This, like doce, is a hard recipe and includes a lot of stirring. Jaggery and coconut milk are stirred constantly – to keep away from lumps – until the combination is decreased by means of half. It is cooked when it leaves the facets of the vessel.
Kormola/ Carambolas
These mildly sweet, fried treats look like flower buds and are thus called phoolancho kalyo. The dough is made with maida, eggs, sugar and coconut milk.
It gets rolled out, cut into squares and then twisted at the ends to make a conch shell. Then these tiny bits are deep-fried till golden brown and crunchy.
Kulkul/ Kidiyo
This deep-fried snack with textured ridged edges is known as kidiyo (worm). They appear like shells or butter curls. Kulkuls are made with flour, rava, eggs, ghee, sugar and some coconut milk. Though a easy recipe to pull off, forming the curls takes time and is commonly a crew activity.
Once the dough is formed, it receives fashioned into small balls, unfold out on the return of a fork or comb and then rolled into a curl. This is then deep-fried in oil. Generally crunchy, editions consist of a dusting of sugar on the top or a sugar glaze.
Neuri/Neureos – The Popular Among All The Goan Sweets
Neureos are flaky, crescent-shaped pastries packed with a sweet coconut filling with dried fruits, or a dry filling of a gram, moong flour and powdered sugar and are the most most popular among the Goans in comparison to the other Goan sweets.
This are normally prepared for Diwali and Ganesh Chaturthi too. In India, they are mechanically referred to as karanji or gujia.
