Enter Via Laundry Chef Helly Raichura Is Selling Handmade Indian Sweets To Celebrate Diwali

Enter Via Laundry chef Helly Raichura has been making mithai since she was 14. “My baa [grandmother] was exceptional at making mithai and my great-grandfather used to be a halwai [Indian confectioner] operating a sweet shop in Ahmedabad. So I guess I am a bit genetically programmed for this,” she tells Broadsheet.

To celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights which falls on Monday October 20 this year, the chef behind the Hot-Listed restaurant is selling boxes of handmade mithai – something she’s not done since Melbourne’s lockdowns in 2020.

The sweets can be easily found at Indian grocery stores year-round. But they are commonly associated with Diwali and gifted to friends and family. “To put it very simply, mithai are like petit fours,” she says. “They’re also equivalent to a box of chocolates that are exchanged during the festive season.”

In addition to a rose and pistachio kalakand (a milk cake) and a fig and medjool date roll, the chef is making four mithai that she says are commonly enjoyed around Diwali: ladoos (spherical sweets), pendas (milk fudge), barfis (a fudge-like milk-based sweet) and a fig and medjool date roll, as well as gajjar halwa (a pudding made from grated carrots) topped with roasted nuts.

But Raichura’s mithai aren’t what you’ll find at the grocery store. They’re handcrafted gems made using high-quality ingredients and traditional techniques. “When we say saffron, we are using saffron and not colours. [We’re using] medjool dates instead of cornflour, which is typically used to bulk up date and fig rolls.”

Her mithai come in delicate and refined flavour combinations. Hazelnut barfis are topped with dark chocolate ganache. Sunflower-shaped saffron and orange zest pendas uses Irani saffron and are made by reducing St David Dairy milk. And the richness of the ladoos, resulting from coconut cream and ghee, is cut thanks to a white chocolate and passionfruit fudge centre. “Often Indian sweets are considered too sweet,” Raichura says. “The aim is to not make sweets extremely sweet, but balanced.”

The mithai are only available via pre-order from the Enter Via Laundry website. Orders close in early October and mithai will be available for collection from Wednesday October 15 to Friday October 17.

sweetbox.entervialaundry.com.au