Goa celebrates Christmas in style. I can honestly say that we have traveled a lot and no matter where we go, we still miss Christmas in Goa. This could be largely because Goa is home for us. One of the things that is really special about the celebrations is the Goan Christmas sweets.
Traditionally you will find that households start prepping their sweets a few days in advance. People put a lot of planning into what they make and when. This revolves around how much time a sweet takes to make and its shelf life.
Sweets that have coconut in them tend to be made closer to Christmas day because they have a shorter shelf life. To be honest, many of the Christmas sweets have coconut in them though.
Sometimes, you will find that friends, family and neighbors get together and help each other with the sweet making. It makes making the Goan Christmas sweets so much fun and definitely easier work. It is one of my fondest memories from my childhood.
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Goan Christmas Sweets: Table Of Content
1. Dodol
Dodol is a Goan Christmas sweet that is made using coconut milk, jaggery and rice flour. It has a slightly chewy consistency and it reminds of a pudding like texture. Intriguingly enough, I have found Dodol in Malaysia in places like Melacca where the Portuguese had their base. It may be the reason why we share a similar sweet.
Dodol is painstaking to make. It requires constant supervision and stirring. While it is easily available in the local markets, homemade dodol is one of the most delicious things you will ever taste.
2. Bebinca
Bebinca is the queen of all Goan Christmas sweets. This layered cake is not really a cake. Traditionally this cake was made during the Christmas season. Nowadays, Bebinca is popular not just with the locals but with the tourists too. In fact, it is even exported out of the country. The demand is that high.
Bebinca is another one of the Goan Christmas sweets that is hard to master. Each layer of the bebinca must be baked individually. You have to be extremely careful as you add new layers because you could very easily burn the lower layers.
Traditionally, bebinca has seven layers. The more layered versions of this cake require a great deal of skill and are often highly sought after.
3. Neureos/ Nevris
I don’t have the best picture of neureos but this will show you the general shape of them.
Goan Christmas sweets cannot be complete without neureos. This traditional sweet is often called nevris too. It is a fried dumpling that is stuffed with either coconut, cashewnuts and raisins or besan flour.
Each household makes a variation of the recipe but somehow I find that the coconut versions are the most common during the Christmas season.
Neuris are probably one of the most popular sweets of the season and an exchange of sweets is not really complete without adding them to the plate.
4. Kulkuls
Among the numerous Goan Christmas sweets, I have always found kulkuls the most fun to make.
Kulkuls are another Goan Christmas sweet that we grew up with. I think of the whole range of sweets that we see at this time of the year, kulkuls are probably the easiest to make. They however can be quite time consuming if you are making them on your own. This is because you have to shape them.
Kulkuls are remarkably easy to make. You just have to knead the sweetened dough and then make it into shape. Usually the whole daily is involved in the shaping process. As you can imagine the laughter and noise really fills up the house and once the frying commences, most of the first batch is eaten hot!
5. Bolinhas
Bolinhas are really popular Christmas sweets that you will find in every household.
Bolinhas are a small Goan Christmas sweet that are loved no matter what time of the year they are made in. This sweet is made with semolina and sugar. Some people call them cookies but honestly the texture of Bolinhas is very different from cookies.
The best Bolinhas are usually slightly crisp on the outside and soft inside. If you are lucky enough to taste this delicacy right off the oven, you will fall in love. My grandmother would make and pack these for me when I headed back to the hostel in Mumbai. It always felt as if I took a bit of Christmas back with me.
6. Batica
Goan Christmas sweets cannot be complete without talking about Batica.
This was one of my Grandmother’s favorite recipes. She made Batica so often that we may or may not have had our fill of it as a kid. Batica is another one of the popular Goan Christmas sweets. It is made of semolina and coconut. In a sense it does taste a bit similar to the bolinhas. The big difference is that Batica is soft and cake-like. You have to slice into it and serve it as slices.
Bolinhas on the other hand are shaped like cookies and are hard in texture. Both are however well loved and are some of the most popular Goan Christmas sweets.
7. Perad
Perad is also known as Guava cheese. As you can guess, Perad is made of guava. It is made using guava puree. The puree is sieved to remove the stray seeds and thicker parts of the pulp. It takes a long time to cook and requires a lot of stirring because if you don’t the mixture sticks to the pan and burns.
Once it is thickened, the mixture is then poured onto a tray and allowed to cool before it is sliced and served.
Perad has a longer shelf life compared to most other Goan Christmas sweets. It is chewy and remarkably sweet. In fact, it has the goodness of guava without the seeds in between.
8. Doce
Doce comes in two different shapes. They can be rectangular or can be in the form of a cake.
A spread of Goan Christmas sweets cannot be complete without Doce. Sometimes you will hear it being referred to as Doce de grao which translates as sweet grain. This describes the dish pretty well because Doce is a dish made out of gram flour. The dish is flavored with coconut, sugar and cardamom.
This is another dish that requires time and patience to make. I haven’t made it myself but my grandmother always talked about how the mixture would splatter when it was hot on the stove. The mixture has to be stirred constantly and this is really hard especially as it thickens.
Grandma would joke that you need serious muscles to make Doce well. Doce remains one of my favorite dishes though and luckily for me, you can get it in the market easily.
9. Rose cookies
Rose cookies are one of the favorite Goan Christmas sweets where kids are concerned.
Rose cookies are a fun Goan Christmas sweet. I have the fondest memories of my mum making these and us devouring it while she laughed and chased us. Rose cookies are actually pretty easy to make. You need the dough, hot oil and the moulds. The moulds are special. They have a long handle attached so you can dip them in the hot oil.
The mould is first dipped in the oil, then in batter and then in the oil again. They are kept in the oil till the rose shaped cookies separate from the mould. My kids decided to rename this dish to snowflake cookies and I find it pretty appropriate.
10. Marzipan
Marzipan is where my mum really shines. She makes the best marzipan in the world and boy are we lucky because this is one of the Goan Christmas sweets that cannot be bought easily. Well, you can buy it but it is really hard to get a good batch.
Marzipan is made up of ground cashews. Some people use almonds too. The paste is sweetened. It is then divided into batches so that you can add different colors. These colored pastes are then put inside moulds and kept in the fridge to set.
These sweet little treats are loved by both kids and adults alike. Most people love to place them on trays because they add a splash of color to the Goan Christmas sweets.
11. Gons
Note the delicate coconut curls in this pretty Goan Christmas sweet.
Gons has always been my favorite Goan Christmas sweet. This delicacy is made out of coconut. The trick to making perfect Gons lies in selecting the right coconut. It should not be too tender nor should it be ripe like the regular coconut we use in our daily cooking.
The coconut is sliced into thin strips. These thin strips are then coated with sugar syrup. Perfectly made Gons is chewy and slightly sweet. If the coconut is over ripe then the Gons tends to be hard. The sugar used is also important. If there are too many sugar crystals, Gons does not taste good.
The sugary coconut is then placed on butter paper and left to set. This sweet is loved by kids and adults alike and is made during the Christmas season.
