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.

Arisi Upma

Ingredients Required:

• Raw Rice : 2 cups
• Thuvar dhal : 3 tbsp
• Jeera or Cumin seeds : 1 tsp
• Black pepper : 1tsp
• Coconut grated : 2 tbsp
• Green Chillies : 2
• Ginger grated : 1/4 inch
• Water: 3 cups
• Mustard seeds : 1 tsp
• Udad dhal : 1tsp
• Curry leaves : A few
• Asafoetida : Just a pinch
• Salt : Acc to taste
• Oil : 2tbsp
  

Cooking Method:

• Grind Rice, cumin seeds , pepper, thuvar dhal like rava consistency.
• Heat up oil in a nice heavy bottomed pan , add mustard seeds, udad dal, curry leaves , asafoetida and red chilly(1 if required)
• After this add 3 full cups of water to the pan.
• Bring the water to boil
• Add the ground mixture to this with continous stirring.
• Add salt to taste.
• Simmer the flame to medium.
• Close the pan with a nice lid.Dissolve the dry paste in the water.
• Open the lid and stir again. See if the rice rava has cooked well.
• Add grated coconut and a little coconut oil (1tsp)
• Remove from flame.
• Serve hot with sambar or chutney or Jaggery.
  

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.