Kashmiris are fond of sugar. Common sweetmeats are:
Halwa, sweetmeat originally made of honey, camel's milk, cashew nuts, and many other ingredients and brought from the Persian Gulf, via Bombay, in saucers to United India in the nineteenth century. Halwa tradition reached Kashmir towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Chounth Halwa.
Barfi, a milk-based sweet dish.
Khatai, a Kashmiri sweet biscuit that crumbles on each bite.
Khir, rice pudding.
Phirin, a sweet pudding of condensed milk with soji mixed with dry fruit like raisins, almonds, cashews, and pistachios, sprinkled with rose-water.
Kong Phirin, saffron flavoured rice pudding garnished with nuts.
Seemni, vermicelli kheer.
Shufta, a traditional dessert made with chopped dry fruits, spices like pepper powder, cardamom and more, in sugar syrup, garnished with rose petals.
Mitha Kanagucchi, morels in syrup.
Kofta Khumani, mince apricots.
Kashmiri Roth.Roth, something between a cake and a bread, these sweet rotis made with flour, ghee, yoghurt, poppy seeds, eggs (on special occasions) and sugar are a domestic favourite. The art of baking a perfect roth is as much an acquired skill as it is a relearned discipline passed down from generations.
Basrakh, A sweet delicacy made from flour with a touch of ghee.
Tosha, an age-old Kashmiri dessert.
Lyde, kashmiri dessert made with whole wheat flour.
Nabad, sugar crystallised in an earthen pot or a copper container like Naat and then carved out as a solid sugar ball in a semi-round shape, bigger than a football.
Gulkand, indigenous rose (koshur gulaab) preserved in a sugar base. Non-Kashmiri roses are not used in this formulation. In place of sugar, honey can also be mixed with rose petals.
