Pesara Sunnundalu / Green Gram Laddus

Warning! This recipe is not for the faint hearted or the modern era 'smarties' who count their calorie intake on a day to day basis. The recipe has fat and calories written all over it and yet happens to be one of the popularly loved desserts in my home state, Andhra. This is an old world dessert / snack born when people didn't yet rely on machines to do their jobs and believed that people need to eat good food to keep them fit.
Probably there is no granny in Andhra who would say sunnundalu are not good for you in spite of the amount of ghee and the jaggery / sugar that goes into it. My mom would feed us sunnundalu as an evening snack saying that they are very nutritious because of the protein and iron content in them. Then we did not know ABCs about calories. Anyway even I knew, it would not have mattered since those sunnundalu tasted so yummy and besides I was thin as a stick during my teenage years.
Though 'sunnundalu' refer to the ones prepared with uraddal, they can be made using green gram as well. I love the dal with husk (either urad or moong) - jaggery combination when making sunnundalu and so have used green gram (moong with the husk) and jaggery in this recipe. They are equally delicious as the minapa sunnundalu (urad dal laddus) and can be made in a jiffy. Roasted and powdered green gram can be made ahead and stored in an airtight jar. Just mix jaggery powder and ghee when you love to have sunnundalu.

Ingredients:
1 cup green gram / pesalu
1 cup powdered jaggery (sugar can be substituted)
Ghee to shape the balls (We can't get stingy here. Shaping the mixture into balls becomes difficult when enough ghee is not added.)

Making sunnundalu:
* Dry roast the green gram on medium flame until they slightly brown.
* Cool and grind the green gram into a coarse powder. Then add the jaggery powder to the green gram powder and pulse it in the processor / blender so that they blend well.
* Melt the ghee. Add as much ghee as needed to shape the green gram - jaggery mixture into balls.

These yummy laddus are on their way to 
Susan's MLLA -  30th edition hosted by Priya Mitharwal.

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