Boondi Laddu

An easy way of making Boondi Laddus. My mother gave a big order to some girl who makes Ladoos/Laddus back in India and in the last minute she could not bring those. So, she was kind of upset about it and I thought of making her happy by making these easy Laddus for us to eat.

I never tried this recipe this way before but I felt this was quite easy to make and in less than 30 mins, we made about 25 laddus with 350 g Bhoondi. Make sure you buy plain bhoondi with no spices added to it.

To print this recipe click on the name: Boondi Laddu

You need..

a packet of Bhoondi from an Indian Store (350g)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup water

2 cardammon, crushed

few dry fruits

ghee according to your taste

milk to bind (optional)

1. First make sugar syrup of 1 string consistency.
2. Fry dry fruits in ghee (this is optional).
3. Warm Boondi in microwave for few seconds and crush some, say 1/4 cup and then add all to the sugar syrup and mix well till the boondi absors all the sugar.
4. Add crushed cardammon and dry fruits and mix well.
5. Switch off the stove and leave that aside just for few minutes until the mixture becomes little cold and start making laddus immediately. Keep a glass of cold milk on the side, rub your hands with milk or sprinkle some on the boondi and make Laddus. You should finish making those Laddus when the boondi is warm otherwise it is difficult for the boondi to stick together.

You can remove some boondi aside and add colors like red or green to make those look more colorful and beautiful.

Badusha

If you want real authentic recipe with correct quantities, please refer to the recipe here

I made Badusha many many times and each time it turned out different, I don’t know why. May be the quality of maida or yogurt made them different. I learnt little from each experiment and I used that experience today while making this Badusha. Seriously speaking, I have not measured oil and yogurt in this recipe. And the Badusha has turned out really well. Ravi and Naveen loved those instantly and we finished all at one go.

What I did was, I took 2 cups of maida, added little salt to it, a spoon of baking powder and 1/6th cup of rice flour and mixed them thoroughly (usually people sieve the whole thing together). I kept on adding oil instead of ghee (as I ran out of ghee) until the mixture became like breadcrumbs. Then I kept adding yogurt until the mixture looked like layers and made that into a ball. Do not put water. These are the ground rules for making badusha. Oil/ghee and yogurt form an important part of the recipe. Then covered it with a wet cloth for half an hour. Made small balls out of the dough and pressed in the center. Made thin sugar syrup on the side. Deep fried the balls and soaked in sugar syrup for 15 mins. Took them out and left them aside for an hour.

You can store them for more than a month in a refrigerator. Heat those for 10 sec before eating.

Chana Dal Payasam

It's a quick way of making this payasam. I heard people making this payasam but never made one. My mom makes Polelu (Puran Poli) on Ugadi with Pachadi and some kind of dal with the dal and jaggery/bellam (gur). I never thought I would make this when I started cooking, but somehow ended up making this dish.'

You need...
1 cup chana dal
1 cup water
1 cup milk
1 tsbp ghee
dry fruits
3 cubes Jaggery/bellam
1 spoon cardammon powder

1. Cook chana dal in pressure cooker. Mash half of it.
2. Make jaggery syrup in the pan by adding a cup of water to jaggery. Let it come to a boil.
3. Heat 1 cup milk in a microwave and add it to the syrup.
4. Add chana dal and cardammon powder.
5. Heat a small pan, add ghee, fry dry fruits (cashews, almonds, raisins) and add it to the payasam.

Serve hot or cold, it tasted good both ways. You can try adding dried cocunut pieces along with other dry fruits. For the picture, check my previous post.

Ragi Pudding

I make this quite often now, atleast twice a week. We are incorporating Ragi into our daily food schedule. We are either eating Ragi Dosa or Ragi Pudding daily for dinner after reading a lot of good stuff about Ragi. I even asked Mom to make this for Dad sometimes. My mom talked about Ragi Ambali (that I never heard before), she also gave me the recipe and I will try that soon.

I made this in Microwave though Microwave is not recommended for cooking because of the loss of nutrients due to the radiation.

You need...

3 cups Milk
1 cup Ragi
3 spoons of Jaggery
1/2 spoon dry fruit masala

1. Heat milk in the microwave for 2 or 3 minutes.
2. Mix Ragi with little milk to form a paste.
3. Add that paste to the milk and cook in microwave in 30 sec increments. Remove after 30 sec and mix. Ragi tends to become hard but mix that well and cook again. Cook until the kind of thickness you want. I get my kind of thickness (like pudding) in just 2 or 3 increments. Add dry fruit masala and serve hot.

It is healthy and tasty too. It tastes something like Bambino sweet.

To make Dry Fruit Masala you need..

one tablespoon each of cashews, almonds, pista and one or two cardammoms (Ravi doesn't like the taste of cardammom, he says it dominates, so I put little) and blend all together. Keep the masala for future use. I put this masala in all the desserts.

Sabudana/Tapioca Pudding

Yes, I have finally come back to Blogosphere, I was gone missing for long :-).

We had been to California all of last week (almost 10 days trip) and we had a terrific time with a bunch of friends. It was so exciting to see them all after almost 4 or 6 years. We were wondering how our old friends would be now after all these years but we picked up where we left and we felt that the gap was not much. We all had similar thoughts as before and similar mode of enjoyment. Overall, it was a great trip and such overwhelming response definitely needs to be celebrated with some sweet.

Also today happens to be our friend Sreedhar's birthday, so wishing him happiness and joy for the coming year ahead. Now that he is married and has a wife beside him, I am sure the celebration would bring him extra fun.

This Sago pudding I made is very easy to make. Soak some half cup Sabudana in water for half hour. Remove and leave them for 2-3 hours. Heat 2 cups milk in microwave, add 1/2 cup condensed milk, 1/2 cup evaporated milk,little ghee and little sugar (according to your taste buds) and heat again for 2 mins. Add Sago and keep heating in microwave (in intervals of 1 minute or 30 seconds) until the pudding thickens a bit. Fry dry fruits in ghee and add to the pudding. Enjoy it hot or cold.

Finally, a birthday card for Sreedhar!

Bandaru Laddu

Wishing all my friends and readers, a Happy and Joyous New Year!!


Along with this, I have some special news to announce and that is ..

We are expecting our baby in May (our first one)!! And we are so thrilled to bring this news to you. We have sent number of cards to all our well wishers and friends about this on this New Year and seeing their responses made our day terrific.


On this occasion, I bring you a dessert, which most of us cherish. I think it should be called Besan Laddu instead of Bandaru Laddu, but I got this recipe from a TV channel, E-Tv and the chef named it as Bandaru Laddu. The procedure for Bandaru Laddu is elaborate and demands a lot of time and attention, but this can be done in less than 30 mins. So, this is not an authentic Bandaru Laddu recipe instead a twisted one. The taste was close to Bandaru Laddu though.

2 cups Besan/Gram Flour
3T ghee
1 cup sugar
1t cardammon powder
1/2 cup milk

1. Heat ghee and fry Besan until golden brown.
2. Add sugar, cardammon powder and mix.
3. Add 1/2 cup warm milk and mix.
4. The whole mixture leaves the sides of the pan and the whole mixture becomes a ball.
5. Mix for a minute or two and remove.
6. Make laddus and let them cool down.

To decorate, garnish with dry fruits of your choice.

Strawberry Shrikhand

I got a big bag of strawberries from farmer's market and didn't realise that they were turning bad. And then I decided to make whatever I can from Strawberries, like Shrikhand and a Shake. I still have some left, let's see what other things I can make from them. Was thinking of making Pancakes this morning but somehow didn't find much time as I had prepare something for lunch at the same time.

Recipe is exactly the same as the regular shrikhand except you will add strawberry pulp to yogurt. This is the first time I tasted Shrikhand with Strawberry and the taste was tangy.

2 cups of non-yogurt
5 fresh strawberries
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp honey
1/2 cardammon powder
few crushed dry fruits for garnish

1. Hang yogurt in a muslin cloth for 3-4 hours or until the liquid drains out.
2. Make pulp from strawberries.
3. Whisk together yogurt, strawberries, sugar, honey and cardammon.
4. Garnish with crushed dry fruits.

Serve cold with puris.

Mango Cake (Eggless)

My brother told me not to post this on the site by looking at the color and look of this cake, but don't go by the looks, this infact was much tastier than it looks. I tried for eggless cakes and I found this Mango version. The original recipe asked for real Mangoes but I didn't have any, so I used Mango Pulp instead.

1 cup diced fresh mango/mango pulp

1/4 cup hot water

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup skim milk powder

1/2 cup yogurt

1/2 cup crushed pista

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Sift together the wheat flour, baking powder, and baking soda in a bowl.Add crushed Pista.
3. Put mango, water, sugar, milk powder, yogurt, and oil in a blender. Blend until smooth.
4. Pour the mango puree into flour mixture and mix well.
5. Put the whole mixture in a baking pan and bake until done (about 20-30 mins).
6. Pour some mango pulp and add some dry fruits on the top for decoration.
   

Note: I felt that the cake was less sweeter, so you can increase the quantity of sugar or put some extra mango pulp in the plate and eat.

Almond/Badam Halwa

Who doesn’t love Almonds? And there are so many uses of Almonds. You can make Almond Kheer, Almond Milk, Almond Halwa, or add Almonds to Biryani or sprinkle on desserts. And in whatever way you eat them or cook them, they taste awesome. Almonds are a rich source of Vitamin E. They are also rich in monosaturated fat, one of the two "good" fats responsible for lowering LDL Cholesterol.

Think of Badam Halwa, Ravi’s smiling face comes to my mind. He loves all desserts but this one is one of his favorites. Whenever we go to any Indian Restaurant, he looks into the dessert menu for this sweet. I made this on his birthday recently and he loved it and asked me to make this dish at least once a month.

Ingredients

1 cup Almonds
1.5 cups Sugar
3.5 cups of Wate
r3 Tbsp Ghee
2 Tbsp Milk
Yellow food color
Cardamom Powder (Optional)

1. Boil 2 cups of Water and soak almonds in warm water for half hour.
2. Peel off their skin. This becomes boring after a while, so invite someone to help you.
3. Grind the almonds with the milk
4. Make Sugar Syrup by adding the remaining ½ cup of water to the Sugar.
5. After the Sugar Syrup comes to a boil, add the ground Almond paste and keep stirring to avoid lumps.
6. Add Ghee at regular intervals. You can add more Ghee if you fee like.
7. Keep stirring until the mixture gets thick.
8. Add color and Cardamom powder in the end.
9. When the mixture becomes like a Jam like consistency, remove it from the stove and transfer into the bowl.
10. Garnish with dry fruits in the end. (Optional)
11. Serve hot or cold.

Note:The cookware you used to make this dish becomes sticky; soak it in hot water before washing.

Bandaru Laddu

Wishing all my friends and readers, a Happy and Joyous New Year!!



Along with this, I have some special news to announce and that is .. We are expecting a baby in May (our first one)!! And we are so thrilled to bring this news to you. We have sent number of cards to all our well wishers and friends about this on this New Year and seeing their responses made our day terrific.
On this occasion, I bring you a dessert, which most of us cherish. I think it should be called Besan Laddu instead of Bandaru Laddu, but I got this recipe from a TV channel, E-Tv and the chef named it as Bandaru Laddu. The procedure for Bandaru Laddu is elaborate and demands a lot of time and attention, but this can be done in less than 30 mins. So, this is not an authentic Bandaru Laddu recipe instead a twisted one. The taste was close to Bandaru Laddu though. 2 cups Besan/Gram Flour 3T ghee 1 cup sugar 1t cardammon powder 1/2 cup milk
Heat ghee and fry Besan until golden brown.
Add sugar, cardammon powder and mix.
Add 1/2 cup warm milk and mix.
The whole mixture leaves the sides of the pan and the whole mixture becomes a ball.
Mix for a minute or two and remove.
Make laddus and let them cool down.
To decorate, garnish with dry fruits of your choice.