Soan Papadi

Sugar syrup has always been fascinating for me (being the sweet tooth that I am,) but I’ve always had the worst luck with it. Back home when making sweets, you always boil down sugar to a string consistency so I’ve never really used a thermometer. The first time I had to make salted caramel, I boiled my sugar down to crystals. Then there was the whole debacle with French macarons, which was complicated enough on its own without having to add a sugar syrup element to it. Over time, however, (and I know any baker worth her salt should own a thermometer,) I find that I’m more attuned to judging sugar by the colour and time, rather than the temperature. Of course, adding it to sweets is one thing and playing with it is a whole nother deal. 

Last year, when Diwali came rolling I knew that we couldn’t do the traditional big dinner because of the pandemic, but I did want to give sweet boxes to my friends, as tradition is back home and let’s be honest, I wanted to wow them. When nothing on my repertoire would fit the bill, I started scoring the internet and found this video of a small bakery in Hyderabad pulling sugar to make soan papdi, a simple sweet made all over India. Simple, of course, if sugar is your best friend. Soan Papdi is sugar, pulled until it is wispy thin threads that melt in your mouth, coated in besan (chickpea) flour with a hint of cardamom, topped with sliced pistas. It’s actually one of the cheapest sweets that you can get back in India. There were these small push carts selling soan papdi in these massive glass jars by the roadside. For a rupee, he would give you a palm’s worth in a small slice of paper. My pockets were always jingling with change in the hope that I would run into the sonpapdi man.

It’s also one of the most common boxes of sweets that someone would pick up when they are visiting relatives or friends. Come Diwali and suddenly your house is filled with at least five boxes of soan papdi. 

Making soan papdi is ideally a two person job. It isn’t about strength, but much like pulling taffy, it’s more about allowing the sugar to stretch naturally. That way, it happens more evenly. But because the recipe involves a besan slurry with ghee, you can’t pull it using the taffy method where you just hang it on a hook and pull gently. I found that I could do it alone upto a certain stage, but when it started getting thinner, I needed Ni to hold the other side and pull ever so slowly.

My first attempt was actually during Diwali 2017. I was trying to court a client who wanted to buy Indian sweets, so attempted my hand at playing with sugar. Boy, was that a failure. It was extremely cold in countryside New Hampshire and we lived in a 180 year old farmhouse with ancient heating. The sugar seized within minutes of pulling. I tried a couple of times before giving up, but nothing changed. The sugar kept crackling in my hands and setting into sugar shards. The failure didn’t feel as painful as I mastered the mysore pak that Fall. 

This time around, “you are better with sugar” I told myself in the mirror. “You haven’t burnt any caramel this year. Plus… this house is so much warmer.”

Sure enough, I didn’t burn any sugar, but seize it did, yet again. As my “ouches” reduced while pulling hot sugar, I felt it hardening under my palm, the thinner strands falling victim first. The inevitable frustration creeped inside me as I stared at the clump in front of me. I called upon every miserable thing 2020 had given us and pulled my strength from that. I wasn’t going to let one more thing defeat me. I was going to make sugar be my bitch, if it wasn’t the last thing I was going to do. 

I got my ass kicked in the first round. 

Handed to me in the second. 

The humiliation continued for seven more. 

After each time, I would settle on the couch and tell Ni, “No more. I’m done.”

Five minutes later, “I should try once more, no?” And would be back in the kitchen heating the lump back again. I’m pretty sure I erased some fingerprints handling all that hot sugar. 

Immigration line at the airport is going to be fun. 

After each round, I went looking for more recipes. The problem is that there aren’t really many sources available for the traditional method. I must’ve wanted the bakery video about a 100 times just to understand what I was doing wrong and each time I thought I had it, I was proved wrong. Finally, I found a Malayalee named Veena who had a really nice video of her making soan papdi, pulling sugar with her friend’s help. While that got me further in my sugar pulling skills and I got so close that I could almost taste it, but there were too many sugar shards in there for me to call it a success. 

Once again, I contemplated giving up. I mean, seriously, look at 2020. It’s like Murphy’s law. Everything that can go wrong, will go wrong. 

“One last time,” I told Ni. And myself. 

I cranked up the heat in the house by a few degrees and laid my mat on a wooden cutting board instead of directly on the marble counter. Anything that would help the sugar retain the heat until I was finished pulling through the initial stages. 

And it worked! Oh man, thin, wispy, strands of sugar that disintegrate in your mouth!! I honestly could not believe that I managed to pull it off. I couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear (as you can see in the photos.) I actually got a little too excited that it had reached the thin strand stage that I didn’t even think as to how far it would go. I gave up while ahead and let it set. 

Whatever made me get up from that couch again and again, I’m very thankful. I mean, apart from the Covid, we were told the house that we were living in was on sale and had to entertain strangers who wanted to go through our house, let alone inflict the same pain on someone else while searching for a house, the pandemic has made finding a job more difficult in an already painful process, Winter was looming large and I needed a win. I desperately needed a win. I needed a reason to leave my warm, snuggly bed where the world didn’t matter and the pillow was my best friend. And I got one. That feeling of elation, when I actually got it right, is what I hold onto on the troubling days. 

So, if anyone is looking for a win, might I suggest pulling some sugar.

The first step is to cook the besan and flour in ghee to remove the raw taste and smell. It’ll initially start out looking crumbly, but once cooked will start releasing all that ghee and will become a slurry. I left that on the warmer to make sure that it held that heat and was not a cold shock when I tried to coat the sugar with it. 

Next came the star of the show. Melt the sugar down until it started to turn golden brown, removed it from the heat and poured it onto a greased silicone sheet. The sugar is still molten and ridiculously hot at this stage, so you just lift the sides and spread it around (like how you would an omelette,) and wait for a minute or two, constantly agitating the sugar. Just as it cools down, it will start pulling away from the surface. That’s the cue to start. 

The first stage is where you pull the sugar into a pliable stage. Simple pull straight, fold. Pull straight, fold. It is absolutely gorgeous to see. The sugar starts from being this deep, dark caramel brown to a shiny golden and that’s the cue to stop.

Now comes the actual art. 

Make a circle and pour the warm besan flour slurry in the middle. After making sure every inch of the circle was coated with the slurry, gently tug the circle with both hands, coaxing the sugar to loosen up. When the circle gets too large, make it into a figure eight and fold. Now you have two circles. Keep coating the sugar with the slurry  and pulling gently. Move the circle constantly to make sure that you are pulling evenly. Keep repeating these steps. Remember, the key step is to hold onto the circle, no matter how many times you fold. Stop when the sugar becomes as thin as strands. Separate the strands a little and lay them in a tray, on top some chopped roasted nuts. After 5-10 mins, chop them up into desired pieces. 

So, who’s up for a challenge?

AuthorPriyanka SivaramakrishnanDifficultyAdvanced