Bengal gram flour is a versatile flour.  In Kannada it is called Kadale Hittu, in Hindi, it is called Besan. It is used not only in many famous sweets such as Mysore Pak, laddus and savouries, but it can also be used to dish up some innovative desserts.

Assorted Centres

Ingredients: 1 cup Besan Sieved; 2 tbsp icing sugar; 1 tbsp Honey; 2 tbsp milk powder; 1 tsp, unsalted butter; 2 sweet biscuits (powdered); 1 pepper mint (sweet) crushed to sooji consistency; a little milk; 4 Marie biscuits

For the centres

Few round, big groundnuts, dry roasted with the husk on; Few badams roasted; 2-3 orange biscuits powdered and made into small balls by adding little milk

Method:  Heat a non stick pan, melt the butter, add the besan, roast till the raw smell goes, to golden brown colour. Remove from heat and cool. Combine all the dry ingredients to gather and sieve them at least thrice with a fine sieve to remove tiny lumps. Add honey and make firm dough using milk drop by drop and knead well. Wrap in a polythene bag to avoid drying. This is the basic, besan dough for all the centres.

For the ground nut centre: Take the dough double the size of the groundnut and flatten on your palm. Place a groundnut and roll well and allow it to dry.

For the badam centre: Repeat as ground nut centre.

For the orange centre: Take dough double the size of the orange biscuit ball, repeat as above, dry and store in a airtight clean container.

Sweet Floats

Ingredients : ¾ cup besan sieved; 1 tbsp milk powder; 1 slice fresh bread crumbs - water to mix; 4 pods of elachi powder; A big pinch of saffron

To make the syrup: 2-3 cups of sugar with equal quantity of water

Method: Mix besan, milk powder, bread crumbs, little of elachi powder and saffron petals. Adding water little by little, make into a dough. Do not knead the dough. Rest for five minutes. Heat refined oil in a kadai over medium flame. Shape the dough into reasonably small round balls. Fry slowly till golden brown, soak these round floats in the hot sugar syrup. For sugar syrup: Dissolve sugar in equal quantity of water, boil for 5 minutes and pass through a muslin cloth to remove the dirt.  Add elachi powder and saffron to the syrup.