Baking, Sugar & Desserts, page 2

This department gathers the sweet side of an Asian and British kitchen in one aisle. It covers refined sugar in every grind, unrefined jaggery and mishri, quick dessert mixes for kheer, custard and falooda, the raising agents and flavourings under baking, desiccated coconut for barfi, ladoo and sambol, and milk powder for gulab jamun, milk barfi and kulfi. Many South Asian sweets need only a handful of these: milk, a sweetener, a fat, cardamom and a few drops of rose water.

The biggest question most cooks ask is which sweetener goes where. White granulated sugar dissolves clean and clear, so it is the choice for chashni, the syrup that gulab jamun and jalebi soak in. Jaggery, known as gur in the north, vellam in Tamil Nadu and hakuru in Sri Lanka, brings a caramel, slightly smoky depth to pongal, chikki and a Gujarati dal. Palm and kithul jaggery sit darker again and belong in Sri Lankan kavum, aluwa and watalappan.

For festival cooking, the mixes save hours without hiding what the dish should be. A payasam mix has the vermicelli or rice flakes already measured, a rasmalai mix gives soft discs for the saffron milk, and custard powder turns a pan of milk into the base for fruit custard in minutes. Agar, known as china grass, sets a firm dessert without gelatine.

Bakers will find yeast, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder, cocoa, essences, rose and kewra water, food colours and candied fruit. These are the small tins and bottles that make a cake taste of home, such as pineapple essence in a Sri Lankan butter cake or kewra in a pot of biryani. Trusted names include Heera and Fudco, alongside many others.

Keep sugars and jaggery in sealed jars away from the stove, since steam turns granulated sugar lumpy and jaggery sticky. Dessert mixes and essences keep best in a cool, dark cupboard, and a jar of whole cardamom beside them saves a trip when a craving for kheer strikes on a Sunday.