Ambrosial Candy -- a tale of East v/s West.

I've been learning to make sweets of both the western and eastern(Indian) types. Westers sweets include cakes, breads, pies, and different types of pastries, etc.... Indian sweets include mawa, ghee and sugar based sweets such as Mysore Pak, Gud Papdi, Mohanthaal, laddu, etc....

The primary difference(from the little exposure I've had to both) between these sweet making paradigms I've noticed are the following:

Parameter	Western	Indian
Basic Ingredient	Flour, sugar, eggs	Sugar, Ghee. Indian sweets are broadly classified further into either milk based or flour based, in which case a variety of flours are used
Preparation time	Moderate	Low
Cooking time	Moderate/Low	High
Sensitivity to change in ingredient proportion	Very High	Low/Moderate
Sensitivity to change in cooking time	Moderate/Low	Very High
Number of Ingredients	Generally around 10	Generally less than 5
Heating Method	Using Oven	Using Stove
Shelf life of product	Depends upon the product	Depends upon the product
Concentration required during preparation	Moderate/Low	Very High. You can not leave the working area while the dish is being made
Fat content	Moderate/Low	High/Very High
Principle technique	Leavening	High temperature roasting in liquid
Artificial Ingredients	May contain in the form of Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Cream of Tartar, etc....	Should not contain. However, commercial sweet vendors generally use Hydorgenated Vegetable Oil(which is not good for health) instead of Pure Ghee these days