Badusha or Balushahi is Diwali special soft and flaky sweet prepared with Maida or all-purpose flour and deep fried in clarified butter/oil and coated with sugar syrup.

What Is Balushahi or Badusha?

Balushahi / Badushahs / Bhadushah / Badushah / Badusha is a traditional and a popular Indian sweet recipe. It is pretty popular all over India. In fact, it is popularly known as Balushahi in North India whereas in South it is called as Badushah or Badusha.

It is also called as the Indian Doughnut. It’s a soft and flaky sweet prepared with Maida or all-purpose flour and deep fried in clarified butter/oil and coated with sugar syrup.

Hotel V’s Kollu Pethi

I have mentioned in one of my “Non-Recipe” posts that my paternal grand-dad and great granddad owned a hotel/restaurant/mess. The word restaurant was not prevalent in those days and even now we use the term hotel for restaurants. Till date, everyone in my native recognizes and addresses us with our great grandfather’s name prefixed with the term Hotel. I am always addressed as Hotel V’s kollu pethi. (Great granddaughter)

With my granddad’s demise, they had to sell it down and as my dad and uncle wanted to pursue different career the hotel came to a period. This time when my mom visited us, I wrote down a handful of our family recipes that were popular in our hotel. Apparently all of them were sweets. :-) Here is our first popular recipe – Badusha.

Badusha – the 521^thRecipe

Why am I posting a sweet recipe all of a sudden? That too our traditional family recipe? Err my blog turned 7 today. Yes, I and my blog are in this blogging space for the past 7 years. So far I have mentioned only about my 100^th and 300^th recipe and I haven’t mentioned about any other blog statistics or numbers in this space.

I usually don’t keep track of them. But how did I remember that it’s the 7^th birthday? As I was doing a regular blog maintenance last month (cleaning up categories, tags etc.) I realized that July 24^th marks the completion of 7 years. My very first recipe was Paruppu Thogayal and this is my 521^th recipe and it’s going to be the Badusha.

When Amma explained the recipe, I was surprised to see the ingredient yogurt instead of milk. I might have confirmed an n number of times and at one point she gave up and asked me to check with my grandma. ;-) No, I didn’t check with my grandma. I know it’s the family recipe and I wanted to try it the same way. The end result – all of us loved it and Vaandu’s verdict was “It’s better than the cookies Amma” ;-)

Before getting into the recipe, I would like to thank my family, friends and all my readers for this humongous support. Without any further ado, here is the recipe. :-)

Badusha or Balushahi Recipe

Ingredients:

Maida / All Purpose Flour – 1 cup
Baking Soda – ½ tsp
Baking Powder – ¼ tsp
Yoghurt / Curd / Yogurt – 3 tbsps (I used greek yogurt)
Melted Ghee – 3 tbsps + 1 tsp
Water – 1 cup + 1 tbsp
Sugar – 1 cup
Oil – for frying
Saffron Strands – a pinch
Elaichi Powder – 1 tsp
Dried fruits nuts or colored grated coconut or colored sugar crystal or saffron threads for decoration.

Steps:

Preparing the dough:

In a wide bowl, take the 3 tbsps of ghee, 3 tbsps of yogurt, baking soda and baking powder and whisk well. I used my electric hand mixer and whipped it for about 4 to 5 minutes till it becomes frothy.
Now remove the hand mixer and add the maida and 1 tbsp of water and slowly knead the dough.
Do not add any more water. The dough should be soft and moist but it should be too moist.

Knead the dough nice for about 5 minutes and apply 1 tsp of ghee on top and let it sit until the sugar syrup is ready.

Shaping the Dough into Badusha:

Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.
Now pinch a small lemon sized dough and shape into a round ball.

Flatten this round ball like below. Do not flatten like thattai, more like semi flattened sphere.
Now using your thumb or fore-finger press in the middle and twist it. Do not make a hole just a small dent. ;-)
Repeat the same for the rest of the dough.

Parallel Task: When you shaping the badusha, you can heat the oil for frying and also prepare the sugar syrup.

Preparing the Sugar Syrup:

In a wide pan add 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water and heat it slowly.
Add a pinch of saffron and elaichi powder.

Mix till the sugar dissolves and let it simmer for couple more minutes and turn the heat off.

Frying the Badusha:

Heat the oil for frying in a pan and make sure it is in low heat. (I have number setting and kept it between 3 and 4)
Frying in low heat ensures that badusha gets cooked well both inside and outside.
Once the oil is hot, frying badushas until they turn golden brown. I fried 3 badushas at a time. It varies depending upon your pan size.
Let the badushas rest in tissue paper or absorbent paper.

Soaking in the Sugar Syrup:

Now add the fried badushas into the sugar syrup.
Make sure the badushas are coated well in the syrup.
Let it soak for 30 minutes and make sure you flip the badushas for every 5 – 10 minutes so that its gets soaked well in the syrup.

And that’s it. Badusha is ready. Decorate with dried fruits or saffron threads or use colored sugar crystal like me.

Notes:

This recipe might sound like a lengthy process. But after you knead the dough, you can prepare the sugar syrup and heat the oil for frying while shaping the badusha. By that way you can prepare it quickly without letting the sugar syrup crystallize.
If the sugar syrup crustallizes, add ½ cup of water and heat it for couple of minutes.
Make sure you whisk the ghee, yogurt and baking soda and powder nicely. That’s is the key thing and also knead the dough.
Also ensure the you are frying it in low heat for even cooking.
When you are trying it for the first time, don’t worry about the shape. You will eventually get it :-)

Enjoying this Badusha or Balushahi? You will love these, too:

Have you made this recipe?

If you’ve made this Balushahi recipe, please share your photos with me on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or Twitter – I will be delighted to see your results!

📖 Recipe

Comments

Akhila says

August 11, 2020 at 9:47 am

Hi, thanks for the recipe. Tried with all purpose flour and also wheat flour.. came out really well. my kids enjoyed a lot. thanks again.

- Srividhya G says
  
  August 12, 2020 at 8:27 am
  
  oh wow, thanks a lot for the feedback.

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Badusha | Balushahi | A Sweet to Celebrate the Special Occasion