Mysore Pak

Ingredients Required:

• Besan or kadala mavu - 1 cup
• Sugar - 1 1/2 cups
• Water - 1 cup
• Ghee - 2 cups

2 cups ghee for 1 cup besan sounds a lot but believe me this is required for really yummy mysore pak. Mysore pak made like this will be very soft and dissolve in your mouth :-)

Cooking Method:

• In a heavy bottomed pan , put the besan and fry it for a few min in medium flame. This is mainly take out any lumps in the besan. If you find any make sure you break it.
• Take this out and keep aside.
• Add 1 cup water to the pan and add sugar to it and heat it.
• Keep a plate greased well with ghee ready.
• Meanwhile melt the ghee in another stove and keep it ready.
• Keep stirring the sugar syrup until you get a single thread consistency.
• Now slowly start adding a little quantity of besan.
• Stir well followed by little ghee and make everything mixes well.
• Keep doing this until all of besan is over.
• You wills till have ghee left. Slowly add this little by little until it is over constantly stirring the mixture.
• All along the flame should be medium or sim.
• Once you start seeing a porous formation and the mysore pak starts leaving the pan, turn off flame.
• Pour this mixture into the greased plate and shake the plate well so that the mixture spreads evenly.
• Let this cool for a few minutes.
• With the help of a greased knife, cut diamond shaped pieces or rectangular pieces of mysore pak.
• Serve hot or cold.

PS : as soon as you see the porous formation switch off flame and pour immediately else, you will get mysore that is very hard.

Rava Kesari or Sooji ka Halwa

This is one of the easiest , fastest and tastiest sweets to make. Kesari gets it's name from the word Kesar which means Saffron.

Ingredients Required:

• Rava - 1 cup
• Sugar - 2 cups
• Water - 2 cups
• Ghee - 3/4 cup
• Cashewnuts - a few
• Saffron - a few strings (soak in a tbsp of milk)
• Raisins - a few
• Orange/Red food colour - 2 drops (mix in a tsp of milk)
• Cardamom powder - 1/4 tsp

Cooking Method:

• Add 1 tbsp of ghee in a frying pan


• Add rava to the pan and roast until golden brown.


• Boil 2 cups of .


• Take a heavy bottomed pan and add water and then add roasted rava to this, all of this in medium flame stove.


• Mix constantly so that rava does not form balls.


• Add sugar to this and stir continously.


• Add food color to this after mixing in a tsp of milk.


• Add the saffron soaked in milk.


• Slowly start adding ghee little by little and stir until the mixture solidifies.


• Add cardamom powder, stir again and switch off the flame.


• Add chopped cashew nuts and raisins fried in ghee.


• Serve hot.


• If kids like it, you can even pour this on a plate and cut into their desired shapes.
  

Thenga Burfi or Coconut Burfi

I like this sweet personally because it needs very less amount of ghee and the ingredients required are mostly readily available at home and the time it takes to prepare is minimal.

Ingredients Required:

• Fresh grated coconut - 1 cup (I always prefer the fresh one, but if you do not have it you can use the frozen one or even the coconut powder)
• Sugar - 1 cup
• Cardamom powder 1/4 tsp
• Ghee - 1 tbsp

Cooking Method:

• Take a nice pan that is heavy at the bottom.
• Add sugar and a little water and wait until the sugar dissolves.
• Add the grated coconut to this and mix well.
• Keep stirring for a while in medium or slow flame.
• Add cardomom powder.
• Keep stirring until the mixture dries up.
• Grease a nice plate with ghee.
• Add the mixture prepared above and spread it or shake the plate until the mixture spreads evenly.
• Cut into diamond shaped pieces after letting it cool for 10 min. Make sure the knife used for cutting is also greased with ghee.

Akkaravadisal

This receipe is posted as requested by brother-in-law, this is for you Bharath :-)

Akkaravadisal is a typical Iyengar receipe. People often think that sakara pongal are the same. Read more and you will find the difference :-)


Ingredients Required:

• Rice - 1 cup


• Whole Milk - 5 cups


• Moong dhal or greem gram dhal - 1/4 cup


• Chana Dhal - 1 tbsp


• 1 cup grated jaggery or you can use Sugar or Kalkandu


• Ghee - 1/2 cup (Yes this is the full fat version :-)


• cashew,raisins - A few


• Saffron Strings - About 10


• Cardamom pdr-1 tsp
  

Cooking Method:

• Lightly roast moong dhal and rice.
• Add saffron string to this.
• Place the above in cooker for pressure cooking after adding 5 cups of milk.
• Do not add water as milk will be used instead.
• Remove from cooker and mash it up nicely.
• Add jaggery and stir until the mixture solidifies.
• Add cardamom powder.
• Fry Cashews and raisins in all of the ghee and add to the above.
• Serve hot with extra ghee.

Pal Gova (Microwave method)/ Doodh koya (sweet)

With Diwali just coming up you can add 1 more easy receipe to your list of sweets that you plan on making and that too just in 5-6 min, you can have nice yummy pal gova ready.

Ingredients Required:

• Condensed milk - 1 can
• Curd - 1 tbsp
• Ghee - 2 tbsp

Cooking Method:

• Open the can of condensed milk and empty in a microwavable glass container ( I prefer glass to plastic always as glass is always safer).
• Now add 1tbsp of curd to the condensed milk.
• Stir well and keep it in the microwave for 2 min
• Remove and stir again.
• Add 2tbsp of ghee to this and microwave again for 3 min.
• Remove from microwave and check the consistency, if very loose, keep in microwave for a min or 2 again .
• Serve hot with some nice bajjis :-) or mixture.

Ukkarai Receipe

Ukkarai is a sweet that we definitely make for diwali. It is really tasty and here is the receipe for it. Enjoy!!

Ingredients Required:

• 1/2 kg Bengal gram or kadala paruppu
• Ghee - 6tbsp
• Jaggery - 400 to 500 gms
• Cahewnut - a handful cut into small pieces
• Cardamom seeds - 4-5 finely powdered
• Salt - a pinch
• 1 cup of water

Cooking Method:

• Soak the kadala paruppu or chana dhal in water for 2-3 hours.
• Clean and drain the water.
• Now grind this into a thick paste with very very little water.
• Add jaggery in a pan, add some water and prepare a syrup thick (but not too thick, just 1thread in consistency).
• Add the ground paste and keep stirring.
• Add ghee little by little until the mixture does not stick to the pan.
• Add cardamom powder.
• Add cashew nuts.
• Try to hold a little of ukkarai in hand and it should not stick to your hand when pressed.
• Serve hot or cold as desired.