Sharkarpara

This is yet another one of my Deepavali favourites. We used to get this sweet from our Punjabi friends for Deepavali. This is also my mum's favorite. I made some using the recipe below and gave some to her and she thought the paras were store-bought.

Ingredients:

500g all purpose flour
100g shortening (I used 50g unsalted butter and 50g vegetable shortenening)
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

enough water to make a medium firm dough.

For the syrup:

300g sugar
100g water

Method:

1.   Sift flour, baking powder and salt together.
2.   Rub shortening into the flour.
3.    Add in water a little at a time until you have a firm smooth dough.
4.   Wrap dough in cling wrap and let is rest for about 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
5.   Roll dough out to 1/2 inch thickness and cut  paras into 1 cm squares.
6.   Heat oil drop in paras into medium low flame and fry until the paras are light brown.
7.   Drain on paper towels and let it cool to room temperature.
8.   Once the paras are at room temperature, prepare the syrup for the sugar coating.
9.   Heat sugar and water in a wok and keep stirring the syrup until it it reaches soft ball stage.
      Syrup dropped into a bowl of cold wateer should be able to hold it shape and form a soft
      ball.
10. At this stage drop in the paras into the sugar syrup and stir quickly until all the paras are
       well coated with syrup. Turn off the fire and transfer the paras to a tray to cool.
11. Break the paras up and store in an air tight container.

Note:
Need to fry the paras in medium to low heat so that the paras get cooked inside.