Wheat Jowar Flour Burfi

Today I wanted to eat something sweet. Since my better half is on a business trip, I did not want to bake anything. After thinking for a while, it occurred to me that my mom used to make gulpafti/wheat flour burfi, which used to be melt in the mouth type. She used very little ghee/clarified butter to make it. I wanted to experiment with it and decided to add Jowar/Sorghum flour to it. I made a small batch of this burfi and it came out very well. Best part of the whole thing was, I used just a teaspoon of ghee to make it.

Ingredients:
Whole wheat flour - 1/2 cup
Jowar flour - 1/4 cup
Jaggery/Brown sugar - 1/4 cup, firmly packed
Ghee/Clarified butter - 1 tsp + a little to grease the plate or dish
Water - 2tbsp
Milk - 5 tbsp
Broken Cashews - few(optional)

Method of Preparation:
1. Heat a small non stick pan and add ghee to it. Then add the finely chopped/grated jaggery to it and let it melt on low heat.
2. Meanwhile heat a pan and add the wheat flour and jowar flour to it. Mix well so that both the flours get mixed with each other. Fry on medium heat till it turns golden brown.
3. Add water to the melted jaggery and mix well and let it simmer on very low heat.
4. Add the hot flour mixture to the jaggery pan and switch off the heat. Mix well using a spatula until the while mixture turns into a jaggery flour crumble. Now add the milk, mix well and put the pan back on low heat.
5. The mixture forms a smooth dough, now mix it continuously using a spatula for a minute or two, once the raw smell disappears, take off heat and transfer the burfi mixture to a greased plate or dish.
6. Using the back of a spoon/spatula, flatten the burfi evenly.
7. After 2 minutes, use a knife to cut pieces of burfi. Press cashew pieces on each burfi.
8. Carefully take out the wheat jowar flour burfi pieces onto another plate and let them cool down completely.
9. Enjoy the wheat jowar flour burfi.

Rasgulla

All my fellow bloggers are posting a lot of recipes for deepavali. The first thing I do every morning is to check out all the beautiful posts of my blogger friends and find out who made which sweet or savory item today :). Today I tried to make badam/almond burfi and it turned out as badam halwa, I reduced the amount of sugar in the original recipe and I guess that was one of the reasons behind burfi turning into halwa :). I do not eat many sweets, so I hardly try my hand at making them, however after looking at all the wonderful posts on sweets, I did not want to give up after the badam burfi incident. So, I tried making rasgulla. I followed the recipe posted by Raks and though my rasgullas did not turn up as good as hers, they were very yummy and we loved them. Thanks for the recipe Raks.

Ingredients:
Full Fat Milk - 1 litre/4 cups
Lime juice - 3 tbsp
Water - 31/2 cups
Sugar - 2 cups
Rose Water - 1/2 tsp

Method of Preparation:
1. Heat milk in a heavy bottomed pan till it starts boiling. Simmer the heat and add the lime juice and stir it.
2. On low heat, wait till the whey water becomes clear, then turn off the heat.
3. Line a strainer with cheese cloth/muslin cloth and pour the curdled milk into it.
4. Put the strainer with the paneer under cold running water, so that the paneer gets rid of the lime smell and sourness.
5. Squeeze the excess water, by gently squeezing the paneer in the cheese cloth and hang it for 30 minutes or press it under heavy weight, so that all the moisture gets drained.
6. Add the paneer to a mixing bowl and knead it for 10 minutes, until you get a smooth dough.
7. Meanwhile add the water, rose water and sugar to a pressure cooker and let it boil.
8. Make small smooth balls out of the paneer and add them gently into the boiling sugar syrup, one by one.
9. Pressure cook the paneer balls till you get one whistle on low heat. Let it simmer for 5 more minutes on low heat after the first whistle. Then turn off the heat.
10. After the pressure is released, the rasgullas should have doubled in size.
11. Let the rasgullas reach room temperature before refrigerating them.
12. Enjoy the ragullas chilled.

Pala Kova

Pala kova is a sweet found in most of the sweet stalls in Andhra Pradesh. It is very easy to make and I followed the traditional way of reducing whole milk.

Ingredients:
Full fat milk - 4 cups
Sugar - 1 tsp
Almonds - 2, finely sliced
Ghee/Butter - to grease a plate

Method of Preparation:
1. Add milk to a heavy bottomed, non stick pan and wait till it starts boiling on medium heat.
2. Once it starts boiling, keep stirring, so that the milk does not burn at the bottom of the pan.
3. It will take around 20 to 25 minutes for the milk to reduce.
4. Once the reduced milk starts leaving the sides of the pan, add the sugar, stir for couple of minutes and turn off the heat and pour it on the greased plate.
5. Add the sliced almonds on top of the pala kova.
6. Enjoy the pala kova with friends and family.

Besan Halwa

Its been long since I made any sweet and today I wanted to try this simple recipe which does not need loads of ghee and sugar. Tomorrow my better half is returning from a business trip and thought of making this for him. So today I tried it out and the result was pretty good!!

Ingredients:
Besan/Senagapindi/Gram flour - 1 cup
Milk - 3 cups
Sugar - 8 tsp (adjust according to taste)
Ghee/Oil/Clarified butter - 2tbsp
Cardamom pods - 2, finely powdered
Almonds - 5-6, sliced finely

Method of Preparation:
1. Heat a non stick pan and add ghee/oil. Add the gram flour/senagapindi/besan to the pan and keep stirring continuously for 6-7 minutes on medium to high heat.
2. Once the flour turns golden brown and starts emanating a pleasant smell, add the milk and sugar. Stir continuously ensuring that no lumps are formed.
3. Once the mixture starts thickening, add cardamom/elaichi powder.
4. After the mixture reaches a halwa consistency, turn off the heat and garnish with sliced almonds.
5. Enjoy the besan halwa, while it is still warm.