Voliga / Puran Poli / Sweet stuffed roti

This is a special sweet prepared during festivals or special occasions like weddings or house warming ceremonials. This is a little bit time consuming sweet, so if at all I have to prepare this I will make sure I have enough members to eat them. For best taste, use ghee instead of oil.

Ingredients:
Channa daal / Senaga pappu – 1 cup
Jaggery – 1 cup
Grated dry coconut – 2 tbsp
Khas Khas / Gasaalu – 2 tbsp


For dough:
Wheat flour – 1 cup
Fine Sooji – 1 cup
Salt – ¼ tsp
Water – 1 cup (roughly)
Oil – 1/4 cup

Mix the flour with sooji and make into dough by slowly adding water. The dough should be very soft with sticky consistency. At the end add oil and kneed it thoroughly. Cover the dough and keep it aside for 30 minutes.

Wash and soak the channa daal for 30 minutes in 2 ½ cups of water. Boil the channa daal until they are tender. You can check this by pressing the daal in between thumb and index finger. 

Boiled Chana daal

Note: Do not over cook the daal. If it has happened don’t panic, we can still use this in making a wonderful tangy rasam.

Drain the boiled channa daal and preserve the valuable water to make rasam. If necessary spread the cooked daal on a cotton cloth or kitchen towel and make it completely dry. 

Now grate or pound the jaggery and add the powder to channa daal and cook for few minutes until the jaggery melts and all the moisture evaporates.

Allow it to cool and grind it into smooth solid paste (of course without adding any water). Grind the cardamoms into fine powder and mix with the daal dough.

Now pinch some dough and roll it into flat chapathi, place the daal dough in the centre and bring the corners together to cover the daal dough.

Roll the ball into khus khus and coconut mixture.

Now place the dough on a parchment paper or any plastic sheet and dip your fingers in ghee and press it gently like a flat chapathi using your finger tips. If not, you can roll it with rolling pin.

Transfer this into hot pan, drizzle some ghee and fry like chapathi on both the sides.

This will taste even more on the following day.

Paakam pappu / Peanut sweet

My all time favourite snack. In fact, I love any sweet that is made up of jaggery. The roasted peanuts are soaked in the jaggery syrup and form them into balls. The combination of peanuts and jaggery in any form is excellent.

Ingredients:

Roasted and skinned peanuts - 3 cups

Jaggery Powdered - 3 cups

Grated coconut - 1/4 cup

Water - 3/4th cup

Makes about 40-50 balls

Method:

Before making the recipe, one must have a small plate with cold water to test jaggery syrup readiness.

In a big, thick-bottomed vessel or even in a non-stick pan, add water and jaggery.

Keep in low flame until the jaggery melts completely. Then, increase the flame to medium-high. Jaggery water begins to concentrate. When it starts foaming as shown below, it reached the consistency we want for this recipe. This whole process takes about 15 to 20 minutes.

To test, add few drops of jaggery syrup to the cold water. When pushed with fingers, if the syrup can be rolled to a round and keeps share without melting in spite of tilting the plate to different directions, it is done and the syrup is ready.

Actually, by the time I washed my hands and clicked my camera, the soft ball has been melted a bit.

Constantly stirring, add the peanuts. In 1 minute, the peanuts starts to soak in to the syrup and comes together in to dry mass. Turn off the heat.

If you want to make them into squares, grease a tray and pour the mixture. If you want to make them balls, allow the mixture to cool down a bit.

Take a spoonful of mixture into hands and press gently into round shape and quickly roll them in grated coconut. Keep a bowl of cold water on the side. Dip your hands in-between laddu making to keep hands unsticky and cool.

Tip:
If you didn't get the desired consistency and unable to make balls, spread the mixture in a tray and keep it in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours and then cut into squares.

Kobbari lauju / Coconut fudge

This is an Indian variety of coconut fudge. Unlike the other sweets where you need some expertise to make the sugar syrup, this recipe need not require any experience. Instead of using sugar, I have used jaggery which will give a nice caramel taste and colour. Also, instead of making the sweet in squares, I shaped them in laddu form.

Ingredients:

Fresh grated coconut - 4 cups
Jaggery - 3 cups
Cardamom powder - 2 pinches
Ghee – 1 tbsp to mould the coconut mixture.

Jaggery and grated coconut

Method:

Take a large pan with wide bottom. Add 3/4th cup of water and melt the jaggery. Keep the heat on medium-low allowing the jaggery to melt completely.

Add the grated coconut and cardamom powder to the jaggery syrup.

Keep the heat on medium and cook, stirring frequently to prevent the mixture from sticking to the pan. In about 30 minutes, the mixture will be reduced, becomes very thick and comes away easily from the sides of pan - this is the signal to turnoff the heat.

When the coconut mixture is warm enough, then smear your hands with ghee and make the laddus. Or you can spread it on a greased tray and cut into squares.

I found an empty chocolate box and I filled it with these coconut laddus.

Atukula prasadam / Rice flakes sweet

I have tasted this in a temple as prasadam. I liked the taste very much and got tempted to prepare this at home. Interesting thing is there is no need to cook this recipe. So easy to make.

Atukula Prasadam for Lord Krishna

Ingredients:

Rice flakes – 1 cup
Jaggery, grated – ½ cup
Fresh coconut, grated – ¼ cup
Cashews - 10

Rice Flakes, Coconut, Jaggery, Cashews

Method:

Soak cashews in water for 30 minutes.

Place the colander with rice flakes under running water and mix the rice flakes well, so that all of them will get wet. Immediately add the grated jaggery to the wet rice flakes. By doing this the jaggery gets melted slightly and get sucked into rice flakes and gives nice dark colour. Finally add the grated coconut and soaked cashews into the riceflakes.

Nuvvulunta / Nuvvula mudda / Sesame seeds laddu

Ingredients:


Sesame seeds – 1 cup
Peanuts (Roasted and skinned) – ¼ cup
Jaggery (Grated) – 1 cup
Dry coconut grated – ¼ cup

Jaggery, Peanuts, Sesame / Till seeds / Grated coconut

 

Method:

Dry roast sesame seeds until they leave nice nutty aroma.
Dry roast peanuts, remove the skin and leave them aside.
In the blender grind the peanuts into extra coarse powder and keep it aside.
Now blend the sesame seeds into fine powder until the oil oozes out. Slowly add the jaggery also and blend it again.

Finally add the grated coconut and extra coarse peanut powder.

 
Mix every thing and form laddus. Preserve them in air tight container.
 

Nuvvuluntalu / Nuvvula mudda / Sesame seeds laddu