Bandar Laddu బందరు లడ్డు
Machilipatnam's laddu — coarse gram-flour boondi fried in ghee, bound with sugar syrup and pressed into a dense, crumbly ball with a distinctly caramel note. GI-tagged, and the town's most famous export after Kalamkari.
Where to try it
Sweet shops around Koneru Centre in Machilipatnam; also sold in Vijayawada.
What's in it
Related dishes
Pootharekulu
'Paper sweets' from Atreyapuram in Konaseema: sheets of rice starch as thin as tissue, made by swirling batter on an inverted clay pot, layered with ghee, sugar or jaggery and nuts, then folded. A GI-tagged sweet that is impossible to eat just one of.
Kakinada Kaja
A cylinder of layered maida dough deep-fried and soaked in sugar syrup until the outside is crisp and the inside runs with syrup — the 'gottam kaja' of Kakinada, a coastal cousin of Tapeswaram's madata kaja.
Bobbatlu
Flat sweet breads stuffed with a paste of chana dal and jaggery, cooked on a griddle with ghee — the festival sweet of Ugadi and Sankranti in every Telugu home.
Ariselu
Discs of rice flour and jaggery syrup, fried until chewy-crisp and studded with sesame — the Sankranti sweet that Godavari and Krishna households make by the hundred every January.