Sharkarpara

This is a nice snack to  have and is usually served during 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
1/2 - 3/4 cup water to make a firm dough.
vegetable oil for deep frying
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  and 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 the vegetable oil in wok or pot on medium low flame.  When the oil is hot, carefully drop in the paras into        and fry until the paras are light brown.  Make sure that you fry the paras on medium low flame otherwise the 
      paras will brown too quickly but they will still be uncooked inside.
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 water should be able to hold it shape and form a soft 
      ball.
10. At this stage, switch off the flame and drop the paras into the sugar syrup and stir quickly until all the paras      
       they are well coated with syrup.  After about 1 or 2 minutes of stirring, the sugar coating will become 
       frosted.  Transfer the shakarparas to a tray to cool.
11.  Store in an air tight container.

Note:
You can take a portion of the dough and add some food coloring to the dough. Knead the dough until you get an uniform color on the dough.  I added some red cochineal to about a handful of dough.