Rava Laddus and a Click

Its friday.. My mind always gets a little lazy at this time of the week no matter how busy I am. Just the thought of friday makes me feel lethargic and sluggish. So, just in an effort to increase my productivity I decided to manage a few hours in the kitchen today. I knew I had plans to participate in quite a few events and its only a couple of days left but I've no idea what to make. I was glancing through various cookbooks from my shelf and found quite a few interesting recipes. But most of them required ingredients that I don't usually stock in my pantry. It required a mini visit to the grocery store. That was a good reason for me to postpone those dishes for some other time.

Finally after a lot of reasearch and thinking, I decided to close my cookbook and make my own favorite Rava Laddus. It was a good decision:) Laddus came out phenomenal! Sweet and soft with those yummy flavors. I have a liking for laddus since childhood and that liking still continues. Our Deepavali wasn't complete without rava laddus. Grandma used to make it delicious and I've managed to follow her traditional recipe many times. About a few months before, I tasted these laddus from a friend and it had a slightly different flavor, I just loved it! The secret ingredient was coconut! Adding just a little bit of coconut gave it a different twist and I fell for it right away. Since then I've been modifying my grandma's recipe just by adding a little coconut to it. I like all kinds of laddus, but rava laddus are the only ones that I have tried making at home. May be beacuse of the simple ingredients and the straight-forward method.

This recipe goes for Mythreyees's Sweet Series: Chikki and Laddu event.

Ingredients

• Rava - 1 cup
• Sugar - 1 cup
• Cardamom pods - 5
• Cashews - 10
• Shredded Coconut - 2 tbsp
• Ghee - 2 tbsp
• Milk - 3 tbsp

Procedure

• Heat the pan and dry roast the rava until nice aroma comes. Set aside.
• Remove the skins from cardamom and take just the seeds out. Grind them together with sugar to a fine powder. Mix them with the rava.
• Heat 1 tsp ghee in a pan and roast the cashews. Add this to the rava mixture.
• In the same pan, add another tsp of ghee and fry the coconut until they become golden brown. Add to rava mixture.
• Mix together well and start making the laddus by adding a little ghee and warm milk to each laddu while making it so that the ball holds on tight.

I also managed to make Honey Lemonade, a refreshing and healthy drink for summer. I often make this at home as my daughter just loves honey! The recipe is quite simple. Mix 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1/4 cup honey in a pan. Heat until the honey dissolves fully. Cool and then add 4 cups of cold water, a few ice cubes and a pinch of salt. Mix well and serve chilled.

This entry goes for EC's AFAM:Lemon as well as Jai and Bee's CLICK event.

Honey Lemonade