Gond ke ladoo is made by frying crystals of edible gum (gond) in hot ghee until they puff, roasting whole wheat flour slowly in the rest of the ghee until it smells nutty, mixing in the crushed puffed gond, nuts and powdered sugar or jaggery once the mixture is warm, and rolling it into balls. Our starting point for 15 ladoos is 50 g of gond, 200 g of atta, 150 g of ghee, 50 g of almonds and 150 g of sugar. No standard body publishes a ladoo ratio.
At a glance
- The FAO/WHO additive specification defines gum arabic as the dried exudate of Acacia senegal or closely related Acacia species.
- USDA FoodData Central lists ghee at 900 kcal per 100 g, whole-grain wheat flour at 340, almonds at 579 and sugar at 387; it has no record for gond.
- On those figures our 15-ladoo batch is 2,900 kcal before the gond, about 193 kcal a ladoo, with 10 g of ghee and 10 g of sugar each.
- ICMR-NIN's 2024 guidelines say to limit ghee or butter to 1 to 2 teaspoons a day and define sugar above 25 g a day as high.
What is gond, and which gum is in the packet?
Gond is dried tree gum, sold as pale, glassy crystals. Gum arabic has an international definition, but "gond" is a word for tree gum rather than for one tree, and the sources we opened suggest it can come from more than one species.
The FAO/WHO Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives defines gum arabic as "a dried exudate obtained from the stems and branches of Acacia senegal (L.) Willdenow or closely related species of Acacia", consisting "mainly of high-molecular weight polysaccharides".
In India one of those acacias is babul. A 2017 laboratory study in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules says "Acacia nilotica (Babul tree) is one of the major gum-yielding acacia species found in the Indian subcontinent", and found that babul gum "shows good resemblance" to commercial acacia gum. A 2020 review in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture names four exudate gums in commerce: acacia, karaya, ghatti and tragacanth. No source we opened says which of these a given packet is.
Why does gond puff when it meets hot ghee?
We do not know, and no source we opened explains it. A PubMed search for gum arabic, acacia gum or edible gum with puffing or expansion on frying returned nothing relevant. What follows is what we see at the stove, nothing more.
A glassy crystal dropped into hot ghee sits for a moment, then swells to several times its size, turns opaque white and goes crisp, in seconds; left too long it browns and tastes bitter. In our experience the ghee must be hot but not smoking, the pieces small, and only a few in at once, or they cool the pan and soften.
What quantities of gond, atta, ghee, nuts and sweetener should you start with?
Our starting point for 15 ladoos is 50 g of gond, 200 g of whole wheat flour, 150 g of ghee, 50 g of almonds and 150 g of sugar or jaggery: 600 g in all, so 40 g a ladoo (600 ÷ 15 = 40). No standard body publishes a ratio for gond ke ladoo, and recipes differ widely.
On ICMR-NIN's 15 g tablespoon, 150 g of ghee is ten tablespoons (150 ÷ 15 = 10); see our guide to ghee spoon measures in grams. All of it ends up in the batch: some in the gond, the rest in the flour. Powder the sugar or grate the jaggery, and as in besan ladoo with ghee add it once the mixture is warm, not hot, or in our kitchen it turns loose and sticky.
How do you make gond ke ladoo step by step?
Fry the gond in part of the ghee until it puffs, crush it, roast the atta in the rest of the ghee on a low flame until it smells nutty, cool the mixture to warm, mix in the gond, nuts and sugar, and roll 15 balls.
- Measure. Break 50 g of gond to peppercorn size. Weigh 200 g of atta, 150 g of ghee and 150 g of sugar; powder the sugar with cardamom seeds. Chop 50 g of almonds.
- Heat. Melt about 40 g of the ghee in a heavy kadhai over a medium flame until a test crystal puffs within seconds.
- Fry the gond. A small handful at a time, lifted out as soon as it is white right through.
- Toast the almonds. A minute in the same ghee, then lift them out.
- Add the rest of the ghee and lower the flame.
- Roast the atta. Stir it in and keep stirring on a low flame, scraping the base, until the paste loosens, darkens a shade and smells of roasted nuts, not raw flour.
- Cool to warm. Off the heat, until you can hold the side of the pan.
- Crush the gond. Press the cooled gond into coarse crumbs.
- Mix. Add the gond, almonds and sugar to the warm atta and mix until no streaks remain.
- Roll. Press about 40 g at a time firmly in your palm and roll it into a ball. If it will not hold, add warm ghee a teaspoon at a time. Store in a closed tin once set.
How many calories are in one gond ladoo?
About 193 kcal on our batch, before the gond is counted. USDA FoodData Central has no record for gond, so the gum is left out and the true figure is a little higher. The other four ingredients come from USDA's SR Legacy records, at 9.00, 3.40, 5.79 and 3.87 kcal a gram.
Those are 900 kcal per 100 g for clarified butter (ghee), 340 for whole-grain wheat flour, which stands in for atta, 579 for almonds and 387 for granulated sugar. USDA has no SR Legacy or Foundation entry for jaggery, so a jaggery batch is counted at sugar's figure.
| Ingredient | Batch of 15 | Calories (USDA) | Per ladoo (÷ 15) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Whole wheat flour (atta) | 200 g | 200 × 3.40 = 680 kcal | 13.3 g; 45.3 kcal |
| Ghee | 150 g | 150 × 9.00 = 1,350 kcal | 10 g; 90 kcal |
| Gond (edible gum) | 50 g | No USDA record; not counted | 3.3 g; not counted |
| Almonds | 50 g | 50 × 5.79 = 289.5 kcal | 3.3 g; 19.3 kcal |
| Sugar (or jaggery) | 150 g | 150 × 3.87 = 580.5 kcal | 10 g; 38.7 kcal |
| Batch, plus the gond | 600 g | 680 + 1,350 + 289.5 + 580.5 = 2,900 kcal | 2,900 ÷ 15 = 193.3, about 193 kcal |
How does one ladoo fit the ICMR-NIN 2024 guidelines?
As a day's ghee in one sweet. The ICMR-NIN Dietary Guidelines for Indians (2024) say: "Limit ghee or butter to just 1 to 2 teaspoons/day or avoid, if possible." On the guidelines' 5 g teaspoon, one ladoo's 10 g of ghee is two teaspoons (10 ÷ 5 = 2).
On saturated fat, the guidelines call its use high "when more than 10g/day of visible saturated fats (for a 2000 Kcal diet/ day) is consumed in the form of ghee, butter" or through heavy use of palm or coconut oil in snacks and sweets. USDA lists 60 g of saturated fat per 100 g of ghee, so one ladoo's ghee carries 10 × 0.6 = 6 g.
On sugar: "Consumption of sugar in quantities that contribute over 5% of total energy intake per day or 25 g/day (based on average intake of 2000 Kcal/day) is defined as 'high' sugar." The guidelines count "sucrose (table sugar), jaggery, honey" alike as added sugars. One ladoo's 10 g is 40 per cent of that (10 ÷ 25 = 0.4). If a doctor or dietitian has set limits for you, follow their advice.
Why are gond ladoos made in winter and given after childbirth?
Because that is the custom across north India and Rajasthan, and the sources we opened describe it only as custom. Wikipedia's entry on laddu says gond ke laddu "is commonly served in North India as a postpartum food"; its entry on panjiri records the winter tradition too, and we found no trial behind either.
Wikipedia's entry on panjiri says panjiri is "eaten during winter to ward off cold weather ills and also given to women who are breastfeeding", that in Rajasthan it "is prepared using edible gum (also known as Gond locally)", and that "the mixture is used to prepare laddus out of it". That is the belief as reported, not a measured effect.
A 1988 study in the Indian Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics, a food survey and laboratory analysis in Udaipur, found six laddus, gond ka laddu among them, "widely consumed by lactating women in ball form". A 2025 interview study of new mothers in Punjab describes panjiri, "a high-calorie snack made of ghee, nuts, dried fruits, sugar, and herbal gums", given by families "to improve lactation and warm the body", while doctors advised women who had a caesarean to avoid it. Those are the families' reasons as recorded, not findings.
So we make no claim that a gond ladoo warms the body, builds immunity or increases milk: no source we opened tests any of those. New mothers should follow their doctor's or lactation consultant's advice; our article on ghee while breastfeeding sets out what the ICMR-NIN guidelines say.
The ghee carries the flavour; ours is Himdhara's A2 bilona ghee.
The short version
Gond ke ladoo is edible tree gum fried in hot ghee until it puffs, crushed and mixed into slowly roasted atta with nuts and sugar or jaggery once the mixture is warm. The gum may be more than one species, and nothing we opened explains why it puffs. Our 15-ladoo batch gives about 193 kcal a ladoo before the gond, with two teaspoons of ghee and 10 g of sugar in each. The winter and postpartum customs are custom only; new mothers should follow their doctor.
Sources
Further reading behind the figures above. Himdhara's own numbers — yields, batch results — come from our production records and the batch reports on the lab reports page.
- Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (1997). Gum arabic. Compendium of Food Additive Specifications, Addendum 5.
- Bhushette PR, Annapure US (2017). Comparative study of Acacia nilotica exudate gum and acacia gum. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (2019). Butter, Clarified butter (ghee). FoodData Central (SR Legacy).
- ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition (2024). Dietary Guidelines for Indians. ICMR-NIN, Hyderabad.
- Kaushik D, Mathew S (1988). Nutritional composition of traditional supplementary foods consumed by lactating women. Indian Journal of Nutrition and Dietetics.