Jelebi (Deep Fried Batter Sweets)

Ingredients	Quantity
Batter:
Plain flour	2 cups
Rice flour	½ cup
Fresh compressed yeast	7gms
Or
Dried yeast	½ tbsp
Lukewarm water	½ cup
Saffron strands	¼ tsp
Boiling water	2 tbsp
Yoghurt	1 tbsp
Vegetable oil	For frying
Syrup:
Sugar	3 cups
Water	3 cups
Light corn syrup	1 tbsp
Rose essence	to flavour
Liquid orange food coloring	1 ½ tsp

Sift the flour and rice flour into a large bowl. Sprinkle yeast on the warm water in a small bowl, leave to soften for 5 minutes and stir to dissolve. Put saffron strands in a cup and pour the boiling water over. Leave to soak for 10 minutes.

Pour dissolved yeast and saffron with its soaking water into a measuring jug. Add tepid water to make up 2 ¼ cups. Stirring with a wooden spoon, add the measured liquid to the flour and beat well until batter is very smooth. Add yoghurt and beat again. Leave to rest for 1 hour. Batter will start to become frothy. Beat vigorously again before starting to fry jelebis. (While batter stands make syrup and leave it to become just warm).

Heat vegetable oil in a deep frying pan and when hot use a funnel to pour in the batter, making circles or figures of eight. Frying, turning once, until crisp and golden on both sides. Lift out on a slotted spoon, let the oil drain for a fews seconds, then drop the hot jelebi into the syrup and soak it for a minute or two. Lift out of the syrup (using another slotted spoon) and put on a plate to drain.

Syrup:   Heat sugar and water over low heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Raise heat and boil hard for 8 minutes; syrup should be just thick enough to spin a thread. Remove from heat, allow to cool until lukewarm, flavour with rose essence (about 1.2 tsp of good quality essence is sufficient) and colour a bright orange with food colouring.

Jelebis are coils of crisply fried batter with a rose-scented syrup inside the coils. How the syrup gets into the coils is a mystery unless you do some research on the subject.