Soak the rice and urad dal together for about 3 hours.

Grind it into a smooth paste using very little water. The batter should be as thick as vadai batter.

Transfer the batter to a bowl and add the food color and baking powder to it. Mix it up well to combine everything. The color of the thaen mittai is bright orange, so adjust the food coloring until you get the desired color.

To make the sugar syrup – Combine sugar and water in a wide pan and bring it to a gentle boil. Once all the sugar dissolves and syrup becomes slightly thick, turn the heat to the lowest setting to keep the syrup warm.

Simultaneously, heat the oil in a pan for deep frying the batter. Using a spoon, drop tiny amount of batter into the oil and fry until they are crisp. It will take about 2 to 3 minutes per batch to fry.

Drain the fried pieces on a paper towel lined bowl and then add them to the sugar syrup. Mix gently and let it sit in the sugar syrup.

Repeat the same with the rest of the batter and keep adding them to the sugar syrup.

I left the thaen mittai in the syrup until it could take no more and then removed it on a container and added the next batch. Once I was done with all the batter, I added all the fried balls in the sugar syrup and kept mixing them up once in a while to evenly coat. Once the mixture cooled, the top layer crystallized (as I made the sugar syrup too thick).

You could coat it with some sugar crystals after you take it out of the syrup. Mine crystallized naturally as my syrup was thick.

Once they are entirely cool, transfer them to an air tight container and enjoy the burst of sweetness in every bite.