Poornam Boorelu / Sweet fritters

Poornam boorelu is a delicious treat with a golden hue, with crunchy outer texture and softer inside. A must have sweet for the South Indian festivals.

Ingredients for the batter

1/2 cup black gram /urad dal

1 cup rice

salt to taste

Ingredients for the Poornam

Channa dal/sengapappu – 1 cup

Grated jaggery – 1 cup(adjust according to your choice)

Fresh coconut pieces (optional) - 1/4 cup

Cardamom powder - 3/4^th  tsp

Oil for deep frying

Method:

Wash and soak the rice and urad daal for 2 hours.

In the mean time cook chana daal with 2 cups of water. The daal should be just cooked and hold shape. Drain any left over water from the dal after its cooked. 

Continue cooking the chana daal by adding jaggery.

Once the water gets evaporated completely and it appears like a thick mixture,  use a masher to mash them together till it blends well. Allow it to cool down.

Add the chopped coconut pieces, cardamom powder and mix well. Shape small bite sized balls

Now prepare the batter by draining the water from Urad daal and rice and grind to fine paste adding very little water. It should be like a thick dosa batter. To test the thickness, dip a spoon and when we lift it, the spoon should be coated well with the batter. Add a pinch of salt and mix well. Leave aside covered.

Heat enough oil in a wide heavy bottomed vessel for deep frying the balls. Dip each ball in the batter and let it coat evenly and place in the oil and deep fry till golden brown under medium flame.

Serve warm with a stream of ghee…

.hmmm…. yummy for my tummy…my little one said…

Rasmalai

A divine dessert made up of with divine milk.  The cheese balls are soaked in creamy milk that is boiled with loads of pistachios and almonds and with a hint of saffron which is called as rabdi.

Unlike the rasgullas which will be round in shape and soaked in sugar syrup, these rasmalai will be flat in shape and soaked in rich creamy milk.

The preparation is divided into parts.

First part is preparing the flat rasgullas and the second part is preparation of rabdi.

For Rasgullas -

Milk – 2 litres

Vinegar / Lemon juice – up to ½ cup

To make the cheese balls follow the same procedure as we do for rasgullas except making them flat instead of round.

For Rabdi -

Sugar – ¼ cup

Almonds – 10

Pistachios – 20

Saffron  - 1 pinch

To prepare rabdi –

Take 1 litre of milk and boil it until it reduced to 1/2 litre. Add thinly sliced pistachios, almonds and saffron and cook for some more time and remove from the flame.

Squeeze the sugar syrup from the rasgullas and drop them into rabdi.

Chill them before serving. Chillness will enhance the divine taste.

Bread baasundhi

Baasundi is a rich Indian dessert basically made with milk, flavoured with saffron, fruits and nuts. Here is a quick version of baasundi where condensed milk is used instead of going through the lengthy process of reducing the whole milk. Bread is crumbled and added to the hot milk for texture and flavoured with cardamom and saffron. Finally, serve bread basundi hot or cold garnished with chopped almonds.

Ingredients:
Brioche roll - 1 or 2 Sweet Bread Slices
Milk - 1 1/2 cups
Sweetened Condensed Milk 2 Tbsps
Cardamom Powder a Pinch
Almonds 8-10
Pistachios - 8-10
Saffron few strands
Sugar 1/4 cup

Method:

Soak the almonds in warm water and peel off the skin and slice the almonds.

Chop the pistachios into thin slices.

Soak saffron in a tbsp of warm milk for a minute.

Crumble the bread. 

Boil milk in a heavy bottomed vessel on medium – low flame until it reduces to half.

Keep stirring during the process to avoid scorching.

Stir in cardamom powder and saffron milk.

After a few seconds, add bread and let it soak up the flavoured milk.

Finally stir in sweetened condensed milk and half of chopped almonds.

When the desired consistency of the baasundi is reached, remove from heat.

Garnish bread baasundi with sliced almonds and serve hot or cold.

Paakam vundalu

Again this is another recipe which I learnt from my sister's-in-law friend. Pretty much similar to the one which I prepared earlier - Paakam pappu but the taste is bit different due to the slight variation.

Ingredients:

Peanuts – 2 cups

Roasted chana daal / Putnala pappu – ½ cup

Sesame seeds  / Till – ½ cup

Jaggery – 1 cup heaped

Water – ½ cup

Method –

Roast the sesame seeds until they leave the nice aroma and keep them aside.

Roast and skin the peanuts and keep them aside.

Now mix the above with roasted chana daal (Pappulu)

Melt the jaggery by adding water under low flame and filter it.

Bring the jaggery water to boil until it forms the ball consistency.

As I mentioned before, to do the candy test, place a cup of water and add few drops of boiled jaggery syrup into the cold water.

Take the dropped jaggery syrup into your hand and try to make a ball. If it retains its shape, then it is the perfect consistency. If the ball falls off, then boil the syrup for few more minutes.

As soon as the syrup reaches the consistency, turn off the heat and add the peanuts, roasted chana daal and sesame seeds.

Mix everything and make balls even when the syrup is still warm.

Tip: to avoid the excess hotness, dip your hand in cold water once in a while.

Rasgulla

This delicious sweet has got lots of names in different parts of India. It is called as Rasagola in Oriya or Roshogulla in Bengali and predominantly called as Rasgulla all over the country.

This recipe is originated in Orissa, India where traditionally served in mud pots. Also, Rasgulla has been traditionally offered to the Hindu goddess Lakshmi at the city of Puri in Orissa.

A great science art of transforming the liquid milk into solid succulent dessert.

Ingredients:

Milk - 2 litres
Vinegar - up to 1/2 cup or juice extracted from 3-4 lemons
Sugar - 2 cups
Water - 10 cups
Sooji - 1 tbsp (optional)

Method:

Bring the milk to boil. Add the required amount of vinegar slowly until the milk curdles.

Immediately turn off the heat and drain the curdled milk using a muslin cloth.
When it is still hot try to squeeze out the moisture as much as you can.
To remove the extra moisture, place the muslin cloth along with channa on to a cotton / turkey towel and roll it thoroughly.

Now place the channa  on a clean surface. Add sooji to this and mash it thoroughly to form a nice and smooth dough.

In the mean time, melt the sugar in water and bring it to boil.

Whilst the sugar syrup is boiling, make small balls out of the dough.

Slowly drop the cheese balls into the sugar water and boil them for about 15 - 20 minutes.

The sugar will increase the density of water and hence the cheese balls do not break into pieces. Make sure that the sugar water should not become syrupy whilst boiling for longer period. To avoid this add little bit of water in between.

Note: In order to make Rasgullas the channa should be soft unlike paneer. To get the softest cheese, add few ice cubes as soon as the milk curdles to stop the boiling process with immediate effect. If you do not have the ice cubes handy, dip the muslin cloth with channa in ice cold water.

Coconut Macaroons

Coconut Macaroons have a wonderfully sweet coconut flavor with a crispy exterior and a soft and chewy. A very simple recipe that can me prepared in just few clicks. 

Coconut Macaroons

Ingredients:
Eggs - 3
Coconut – 3 cups
Sugar – 1 cup
Salt – 1 pinch
Plain Flour – 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract - 1/4 tsp

Method:

Beat eggs until frothy.

Add salt, vanilla or almond extract, sugar and whisk everything.
Add coconut and mix everything.

Scoop small amounts onto baking sheet

Bake them for 14 – 18 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 1500 C.

Tip:
You can top them up with glazed cherries or tutti frutti.

Paala poori

I have learned this divine recipe from my mother in law. Pooris are soaked in protein rich coconut milk. The flavour is intensified by adding saffron.

Pooris will melt in the mouth just like that......hmmmm

Ingredients:

Poori – 10 

Milk – 500 ml

Coconut + rice milk – 500 ml

(To prepare this we need 1 whole fresh coconut and 4 tbsp of rice soaked in water for 30 min )

Cashews – 10

Almonds – 10

Cardamom – 1 or 2

Method:

Prepare the poori bit smaller than the usual size so that they can be fit in a serving cup.
To prepare the coconut milk, grind the fresh coconut along with the soaked rice and extract the milk. Filter and remove the pulp.

Coconut and rice milk

Soak cashews, almonds in warm water for about 10-20 minutes and grind them into paste along with cardamom.

Take a sturdy vessel and heat the milk. When the milk gets heated up (not boiled) add the coconut + rice milk and the almond + cashew paste.

Stir every thing and bring it to boil.

Reduce the flame and boil the milk further more until it thickens.

Take the serving bowls. Place 1or 2 poori in a serving bowl.

Now pour the hot milk over it until the pooris gets soaked. Do this 30 minutes before serving, so that the heat gets reduced to room temperature and the pooris get soaked well in the milk, become soft and tastes divine.

Sorakaaya / Lauki Halwa / Bottle gourd sweet

We can prepare lots of recipes with bottle gourd starting from curries, chutneys including the sweets. It has got so many medicinal values. The juice is given to treat the urinary disorders. In olden days, people used to use this dried vegetable as bottles.

Sorakaaya / Lauki Halwa

Ingredients:

Grated bottle gourd - 2 cups

Sugar - 1/2

Milk - 1 cup

Cashews - 10

Ghee - 2 tbsp
Green Food Colour - Pinch (Optional)

Grated bottle gourd and sugar

Method:

Heat a pan with ghee.

Fry the cashews till golden brown.

You can either keep them aside and then add the grated bottle gourd or you can add the bottle gourd to the fried cashews itself.

When the raw smell disappears and the bottle gourd gets transparent, then add milk.

When you feel the bottle gourd is cooked, then add sugar and mix every thing.
At this point add the food colour.

Slowly stir in between until the mixture becomes thick and leaves the sides.

When it reaches the desired consistency, remove from fire.
Serve it warm or chilled.

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.

Boondhi paayasam / Kheer

I call this as modification.com. I just changed the form of the sweet by adding milk. I had some boondhi laddus at home and the kids doesn't want to eat them. So, decided to do this experiment. Trust me, it came out very well. And guess who ate most of it., my little cheeky one.,

There are no standard measurements for this recipe as we are not preparing it right from the scratch.

Ingredients:

Boondhi laddu - 3-4

Milk - 250 ml to 400 ml depending on your choice of consistency

Almonds - 10 (Soaked and chopped into thin slices)

Method:

Bring the milk to boil.

Mash the laddu with fork and mix it with the milk and boil it again under low flame, until the boondhi absorbs the milk. 

When the mixture reaches the desired consistency, then turn off the heat. Garnish with chopped almonds and serve either warm or chilled.

Rabri / Rabdi - Milk sweet

Rabri is a traditional Rajasthani sweet, made by boiling whole milk on medium heat for a long time till it becomes dense and changes its colour to creamer.   In the whole process, the dense cream layers are collected and added at the end. Other than sugar, nothing else is added to this. It is chilled and served as a desert. A tongue licking dessert.

Ingredients:

Whole milk - 2 litres

Sugar - as per taste (Roughly about 3/4th cup)

Method:

I have chosen gold top milk as they are rich with cream. More or less, it requires, same effort for 1 litre or 2 litre, so I planned to prepare 2 litres at a time. As we boil the milk for longer period, this sweet will be preserved up to 10 days in the refrigerator. But, I doubt it., as it is difficult to stay away from it.

Take a big vessel to avoid the over flow of the milk whilst boiling. Also, the main thing in this sweet is the cream layers. If is recommended to use  wide bottomed vessel, so that we can collect more cream layers.


Boil the milk in medium high flame for about 2 hours by stirring occasionally. 
Every time, when ever the layer is formed remove it and keep it aside.


Make sure to scratch the edges to avoid burning. Also remember to scratch at the bottom of the vessel. When it has reached the desired consistency, add sugar and the collected cream layers and boil for few more minutes and turn of the heat. It gets thicker when becomes cold.

Whole milk boiled into dense creamy texture

No matter, how the consistency is., the result is a lip smacking desert.