Kaju Katli - Kaju Katli Recipe - Diwali Sweets Recipes

Kaju Katli is a dream, especially when home made. TH doesn't like Indian sweets except for this one sweet we buy pretty much each time we egt back from India - Kaju Katli! Since we always end up buying it, I never bothered trying to make Kaju Katli at home but since it's Diwali and the festival best suited for trying out sweets, I decided to give his favourite sweet a shot.

It's always a bit scary to make a sweet that requires you to check the done-ness of sugar with the one string consistency test. I watched the recipe video for Kaju Katli (cashew burfi) in Manjula's Kitchen but used my own proportions for making it.

Kaju Katli - Indian Cashew Burfi for Diwali

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Makes 12 pieces

Ingredients:
1 cup of raw cashew nuts
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water

How to make Kaju Katli

1. Measure out the cashew nuts. They need to be raw and dry, so if you have refrigerated the nuts, make sure you leave them out for a while and dry with a kitchen towel.

2. Grind the cashew nuts in your small mixie jar. I powdered them coarsely but you can make it a fine powder too. Just take care not to make it a paste. The powder needs to be dry so pulse slowly until it's powdered.

3. Lightly roast the powdered cashew nuts in very low heat. Don't overdo this, or you will get a paste. I roasted it for about a minute or so. Turn off heat.

4. To prepare the sugar syrup, add the sugar to the water and bring to a rolling boil.

Continue boiling the sugar syrup until it reaches the one-string consistency. It took me about 7 mins to reach this but the time will depend on the heat you use. To check if it's ready, take a small amount of the sugar syrup on the back of a spoon, take a bit with your finger tip and check between the index finger and thumb. If the sugar syrup is sticky and extends into a string, it's done!

5. Immediately pour into the pan with the roasted cashew nut powder and mix gently until well combined. Take a small amount and see if you are able to roll it into a soft ball. If you are, then it's ready. Otherwise, cook for a bit longer.

6. When the right consistency is reached, remove from fire and pat into a greased (with butter or ghee) plate or tray.

7. Once it cools, cut into desired shape. Diamond is the norm so I (tried to, anyway) did the same.

Yummy homemade kaju katli / cashew burfi is ready for Diwali.

This is an easy Diwali sweet recipe you can use to make your sweet ahead of time. Kaju Katli keeps well in an airtight container at room temperature for 5-6 days.

Notes:

- my sugar syrup got a bit over done because I was trying to take a picture of the one-string consistency between my fingers! If you are not trying to do the same, your kaju katli will look more moist and not as crumbly as mine

- grind the cashew nuts a little at a time so that it powders uniformly and doesn't turn into a paste

- you can add some saffron strands to the sugar syrup if you like the flavour

If you have any ideas for easy Diwali sweet recipes, leave a comment!

Unniyappam-Neyyappam-Nei Appam Recipe-Diwali Sweets Recipe

Unniyappam or Neyyappam is traditionally made with powdered raw rice as the base. My athamma (dad's sister) makes the most amazing unniyappam with plain flour as the base and it's delicious, not to mention fail-proof. I first tasted it a couple years back and since then the taste had been haunting me. This time, she made it for me in our ancestral home in Alappuzha as I watched and clicked.

Unniyappam is a regular at our home for Deepavali as one of the Deepavali sweets. Since they taste great when cold as well as warm, they make a perfect make-ahead sweet. The batter needs to rest for a while so make the batter ahead of time and make the unniyappams fresh if you want to enjoy them hot. They cook up in no time so that's a win!

Unniyappam-Neyyappam-Easy Diwali Sweets Recipe

Preparation time: 3-6 hours
Cooking time: 20 minutes
Makes 40 unniyappam (neyyappam)
Recipe Source: Athamma

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of all-purpose flour /maida
1/2 cup of rava / semolina
2 tbsp of rice powder
1/2 to 3/4 cup of ripe banana, pureed
1.5 cups of melted jaggery (adjust to taste)
4-5 green cardamom seeds, powdered
A pinch of baking soda / soda-bi-carb (optional)
1/3 cup of grated coconut
2 tbsp of ghee (how to make ghee at home)
2 cups of oil, for frying
Salt to taste

How to Make Unniyappam (Neyyappam)

1. Melt grated jaggery in some water until you get a thick-ish liquid of pouring consistency. It's hard to give exact measurements here. You can adjust sweetness levels according to your preference later on so no worries. After melting, measure out the required amount of jaggery.

2. To the cooled jaggery, add the flour, rice powder, rava, soda powder (if using) and salt.

Add the pureed bananas to this. Mix well and set aside for at least 3 hours and up to 6 hours.

3. When you are ready to cook the unniyappam, heat the ghee in a pan and add the grated coconut. Fry lightly until the edges turn golden brown.

4. Add the roasted coconut and the powdered cardamom to the batter.

Mix well and adjust the consistency by adding some water (only if needed). The batter should be as thick as idli batter.

5. Heat oil in your unniyappam chatti (paniyaram pan) and pour ladle-fuls of the batter into each hole.

After 2-3 mins on one side, gently turn the unniyappams to the other side. Cook both sides until golden and set aside to drain on a kitchen towel.

Tastes best warm. These unniyappams stay soft even when cold and on the next day too.

Notes:

- Make sure to use ripe bananas when making the unniyappam. You can use pretty much any kind of banana. Athamma said she used to only use palayamkodan (a variety of banana most easily available in Kerala) but the unniyappams drink too much oil so she switched to using poovan banana. The kind we get in Singapore is the long green/yellow kind and that will work just fine too.

- If the bananas are not too ripe, don't omit the soda powder. The bananas help to ferment the batter a bit which make the appams soft.

- You can use small coconut pieces instead of grated coconut.

- We cooked the neyyappams in coconut oil but you can use any regular cooking oil or even ghee (the word neyyappam means ghee appams!). Since we are adding some ghee to the batter, that should give it a nice flavour without you needing to cook it in ghee.

- The appam chatti should be kept on medium-low heat always otherwise the insides won't cook. Try to cook one appam first and check for sweetness levels before proceeding.

Aloo Bonda Recipe | Potato Bondas - A Quick Snack Recipe

I am not a huge fan of potato bonda or pretty much any snack made with potatoes (potato bajji being an exception!). But when amma makes a large, fresh batch of these urulaikizhangu bondas, and there are over 10 people to fight over and enjoy them with, they taste different. The step by step pictures for aloo bonda were taken in Kottayam and since there really wasn't an opportunity to take pictures of the final bonda, I made them again after getting back to Singapore.

If you have boiled potatoes in hand, these aloo bondas will come together very quickly and make for a super quick snack for tea. Even if they go cold, the taste is not compromised much.

Aloo Bonda | Potato Bonda Recipe

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Makes 12-15 bondas
Recipe source: Amma

Ingredients:
3 medium-sized potatoes
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp of ginger garlic paste
2-3 green chillies, deseeded and minced
1 cup of besan / kadalai maavu
1/2 tsp of red chilli powder
A fat pinch of hing / asafoetida
1/4 tsp of turmeric powder
A small pinch of soda powder (soda bi carb)
Salt to taste
1 tbsp of oil + enough to deep fry
A small bunch of coriander leaves

How to Make Urulaikizhangu Bonda

1. Boil the potatoes until soft, peel, mash and set aside.

2. Heat the 1 tbsp oil and lightly saute the onions, ginger, , chillies, and garlic until the onions turn golden brown. Add the mashed potatoes and salt and mix well to combine. Add the chopped coriander leaves. Cook for another 2 mins and aside to cool.

3. Once cool, make small balls of this potato mixture and set aside.

4. Make a thick-ish paste with the besan, chilli powder, salt, turmeric, and hing. The soda powder is optional but I do add a tiny pinch each time.

5. Heat oil for deep frying, dip each of the potato balls into the besan mixture and drop gently into the hot oil.

6. Fry until the bondas turn golden brown. Drain and set aside on a kitchen towel.

When hot enough to handle, serve with thick coconut chutney.

If amma makes snacks, anything goes, even aloo bondas :)

Watermelon-Melon Milkshake | Easy Milkshake Recipes

Easy milkshake recipe with watermelon and melon - I am home now and amma is churning out (sometimes, quite literally!) different things to eat and drink every meal time. Yesterday around noon, we were feeling a bit peckish so she made this quick milkshake which was delicious and so much nicer than eating the fruits plain, although arguably it's healthier and better to eat fruits as is. What I love about watermelon milkshake is the gorgeous colour, especially because of adding melon which is a faint orange. 

My sister was a most obliging model for this pic, few seconds before we all downed the milkshake. You can make this milkshake in under 10 mins - all you need is some melon, chilled milk and a mixer or blender. The fruits we used were chilled overnight too so everything came together really nicely.

When making milkshake, choose ripe fruits. These tasted fabulous just as they are too - sweet and juicy. Another important component is milk. It has to be chilled and preferably whole fat, not the skim or low fat kind, although you can use what you want and have in hand. Amma gets milk from a home that raises their own cows and extracts the cream out of it so all the milk we use at home is naturally lower in fat, yet creamy.

You can make this milkshake ahead of time and store in a closed jug in the refrigerator. Just make sure not to let it sit for more than a couple hours - milkshakes are always best served fresh. Enjoy with your family or serve to guests as a welcome drink before a party.

For more milkshake recipes, check out banana milkshake with dates, mango and banana milkshake, avocado milkshake, and the popular apple almond milkshake.

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Watermelon Melon Milkshake Recipe

by Nags October-22-2012

An easy and healthy milkshake with 2 types of melon - watermelon and musk melon

Ingredients

• 2 cups watermelon, cubed
• 2 cups musk melon, cubed
• 2 cups chilled milk
• 2 tbsp sugar (adjust to taste)

Instructions

1. Blend the cubed fruits together until smooth. No need to add water since the water content in both the melons is quite high. 2. Add in the chilled milk and sugar. Mix together well. 3. Pour into glasses and serve immediately.

Details

Prep time: 5 mins Cook time: 5 mins Total time: 10 mins Yield: 6 glasses

Pattani Mangai Sundal-Peas Sundal-Navaratri Recipes

Sundal to me is either channa (kadalai) sundal or payaru sundal. Although I saw the beach type sundal on Jey's and a couple other blogs, that was really the first I'd heard of them and I hadn't ever tasted it.

So it was a pleasant surprise when I landed in Coimbatore last week and my TH's mom had made pattani thenga mangai sundal (peas sundal with coconut and raw mango). It was delicious with small bites of sour mango pieces, softly cooked peas with coconut and was a great pairing with some spicy rasam and rice. It tastes great as it is for evening snack too.

Ideally, you should use the white dried peas for this and not the green kind but she said due to Navaratri, the white peas was sold out in the nearby store! Green peas is a decent substitute and that's what we used.

Pattani Thenga Mangai Sundal (Green Peas Sundal Recipe)

Preparation time: 8 hours
Cooking time: 10 mins
Serves: 4

Ingredients:
1 cup dried peas (use white or green)
1/3 cup grated coconut
2-3 green chillies, split
1/4 cup diced raw mango
2 tsp oil
1/4 tsp black mustard seeds
A pinch of hing (asafoetida or perungaayam)
A few curry leaves
Salt to taste

How It's Made:

1. Soak the dried peas overnight or at least for 8 hours. Drain and pressure cook for 2 whistles until soft yet not mushy. It's safer to use an open pot with boiling water to cook the peas so you can check and stop when it's done. Sometimes, pressure cooking may overcook the peas.

2. Heat oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds. When they start to pop, add the green chillies and curry leaves. Fry for a few seconds and add the cooked, drained peas and the asafoetida along with the salt. Mix well and add the diced mango and coconut.

3. Let it sit on low flame until the moisture is completely absorbed. Serve hot.

Methi Pulao Recipe - Methi Rice - Fenugreek Leaves Pulav

I love methi and its unique flavour. Although I stock up on kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves / vendhaya keerai) which is lovely for flavouring the likes of Paneer Butter Masala, Paneer Tikka Masala, etc. The fresh leaves are best for for making Methi Paratha (which I absolutely adore) and this Methi Pulao which is so very simple to prepare makes me a very happy person too.

I often make pulao as a one-pot meal complimenting it with a simple raita and papad. This methi pulao doesn't have any vegetables in it so you may want to make a mixed vegetable raita or a side dish to compliment it. I love the flavours and wanted to keep it simple (I am also a very lazy person on a Saturday morning!), so served just this.

Also check out: Methi Paratha | Methi Leaves Sambar | Methi Dal | Methi Mor Kuzhambu

Methi Pulao-Methi Rice-Fenugreek Leaves Pilaf

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Serves 2-3 people

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of basmati rice
1 bunch of fresh methi leaves (fenugreek leaves)
1large onion, sliced long
1-2 tbsp of ghee (make your own ghee)
10 cashew nuts
2 green chillies (adjust to taste)
1 small piece of ginger
3-4 cloves of garlic
1" piece of cinnamon
3 cloves
3 green cardamom pods
1 cup of thick coconut milk (can use water too, but why would you?)
Salt to taste

How I Made It:

0. Wash the rice and soak in water for 30 mins while you go about the rest of the preparations.

1. Wash the methi leaves thoroughly and separate the leaves and thin stems from the thicker stems. Set aside.

2. Heat the ghee in a pan and add the sliced onion. Fry until the onions turn golden brown. Keep stirring the onions otherwise they will not uniformly brown. I do a million other things while frying onions so mine are definitely not uniformly browned. Don't be like me. Drain and set the fried onions aside.

3. To the same pan, add the cashew nuts and fry until they turn brown. Drain and set aside along with the onions. Switch off fire.

4. Grind the green chillies, ginger, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom into a course powder. Turn the pan back on heat and add this ground masala paste to the ghee. You can add more ghee if you feel like you need it but I got through the entire pulao in 2 tbsp ghee (that's not a small quantity anyway).

5. Fry the masala for a minute taking care not to burn it. Then add the washed and drained methi leaves and stir-cook until the leaves start to wilt.

6. Next, add the soaked rice and the coconut milk. Top up with another 1.5 cups of water and salt and mix well.

7. Cook covered on low heat for about 12 mins stirring a couple times in between if you need. The rice should be cooked yet firm and retain its shape. The time will depend on the quality of rice and the heat, etc so keep an eye on the dish starting from 10 mins. If the rice is cooked and there's moisture left, cook in the open pan until it's all absorbed.

Once done, switch off flame and add the fried onion and cashew nuts. Stir gently.

Serve hot with papad and a simple raita.

Lovely!

What's your favourite recipe with methi leaves?

Ghee Recipe-How to Make Ghee-Clarified Butter

Before I start off on how to make your own ghee in 15 mins, let me wish all of you celebrating a wonderful Navaratri Festival Season. Check out Navarathri Recipes on Edible Garden (complete with different types of sundal and payasam and snacks for navaratri).

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A lot of my Indian recipes, especially pulao and biryani and some sweets, call for ghee or clarified butter. Ghee almost unites all of India food-wise because there are very few foods consumed all over India with the same amount of gusto as ghee! Although many brands sell different versions, nothing beats the simple and aromatic ghee made at home from butter.

Ghee is another one of my maternal grandmom's specialty. She was so in love with the whole process of boiling the milk, saving the cream on top, churning it to make butter, and then finally making ghee out of it, that she earned the nickname nei-chatti (ghee pan, when translated loosely) from some of her naughty grandchildren. No, definitely not me! :D Very little else gave her as much pleasure as making ghee from scratch at home, one would think. Amma still follows the same method because we are still lucky enough to be getting milk directly from the... err.. cow. She gets so much better from it that she ends up giving away bottles and bottles to lucky neighbours, friends, and relatives.



Although this is nothing like the 'real deal' I grew up eating, I make some ghee now and then from butter. It's easy, quick, and since ghee stores well, I can it up for a good 2 months before I need another batch. Store-bought ghee doesn't have half the flavour or aroma of this quick ghee made from butter.

Homemade Ghee Recipe

Preparation time: 3 minutes
Cooking time: 10 minutes
Makes 1/2 cup

Ingredients:
200 gm of good quality, unsalted butter
1 strand of curry leaves (optional but highly recommended)

How I Made It:

1. Start with softening the butter to room temperature. This allows uniform 'cooking'. Use unsalted butter, that's important. Salty ghee can't be pleasant.

2. Keep a heavy-bottomed pan on very low low heat and dump the butter in. I am not sure if it will make any difference if you used a non-stick pan here, I used a stainless steel sauce pan.

Continue to simmer on low heat as the butter bubbles up and turns aromatic.

In about 5-10 mins, depending on the amount of water in your butter and the temperature, the butter will turn a golden brown and some of the fat solids will crust at the bottom of the pan. Don't over-scrape it, just gently mix the butter as it cooks.

3. Once it starts crusting around the edges, as in the picture above, add the strand of curry leaves (washed clean and dried). Let it cook in there for a minute or two and then remove from fire.

Let it cook in there for a minute or two and then remove from fire. By this time, the butter will not sizzle and bubble as much as before and the edges will be browner. It's time! Remove from fire and set aside to cool.

4. Once it's warm. strain into a clean (preferably glass) container and store at room temperature if you plan it use it up within 2-3 weeks or in the refrigerator for longer storage. As it ghee cools down, it will solidify so do the straining process when it's warm and not completely cooled.

That's it! Use in all your favourite recipes and sweets and enjoy the fresh aroma of home made ghee. As Diwali is coming up, I am guessing you guys will be using up a fair amount of ghee for the Diwali Sweets Recipes. Hope this recipe comes in handy then!

Notes:

- the curry leaves add a lovely aroma to the ghee, making it smell more nuttier than it inherently is. You can still use this ghee for all kinds of sweets, so don't let that bother you. You can skip the curry leaves if you really want to.

- I will say this one more time, just in case - use unsalted butter!

- When the water content in the butter is higher (like in homemade butter), the cooking time will be much higher. In either case, keep a close eye on the pan otherwise the ghee will burn.

- I have cooked my ghee a bit longer than it needs, in the pics above. The aroma was out of this world! You can stop a bit earlier if you prefer.

- When in the refrigerator, the ghee will harden and be a lighter colour than when liquid. Leave out for some time before using.

- Ghee is the preferred "fuel" for lighting diyas and lamps during pujas and festivals in India. It's believed that the light emitted from a ghee lamp (nei vilakku) is brighter and emits more positive energy than any other oil, although sesame oil comes a close second and more affordable to all.