Sweets for Diwali Archives

Even though I usually prefer to follow traditional method for any sweet dish, Naariyal ke Laddoo with condensed milk is a very quick way to prepare these traditional laddoos. However, this time condensed milk was also Homemade Condensed Milk/Milkmade during Janamashtmi festival, so I decided to go ahead with this no-fail quick-fix recipe for preparing Naariyal ke laddoo.

While celebrating Janmashtmi, we keep fast (vrat) for whole day. This fasting is different than our usual fasting days as this day we don’t use grains and white salt to prepare prasad and food. Everything is prepared with milk or milk based products, dry fruits, fresh fruits and fruit based flours. So I prepared these laddoos for prasad.

This best part about this recipe is that there are no difficult steps to follow. We can make our kids also join-in in the preparation. Just prepare condensed milk one day in advance and next day delicious Naariyal ke laddoo will be ready within 30 to 40 minutes! We can add Khoya/Mawa also to enhance the taste.

Just like Naariyal ki burfi (coconut burfi), I used desiccated coconut powder in laddoos too. But if you want, you can use fresh coconut also. If so, remember that as fresh coconut has a lot of moisture, you will need more quantity of fresh coconut powder than written in the recipe.

Ingredients :

Condensed Milk 250 gms

Desiccated coconut powder 250 gms

1/4th cup extra coconut powder to roll out laddoos

Process :

Pour condensed milk in a big broad pan so that mixing is easy. Add coconut powder in condensed milk and mix it well. Mixture should be thick enough to roll it as firm round balls. If required, add some more coconut powder to get the right consistency.

Now take a little amount of mixture and give it a round shape of laddoo with your palms.

Roll this laddoo in dry coconut powder and repeat the process for all laddoos. And job done!

Isn’t this the fastest way to prepare delicious naariyal ke laddoo!! For longer shelf life keep these laddoos in the fridge.

The moment I listen “besan ke laddoo” immediately my memories go back to Ganesh Chaturthi celebrations at my parents’ house with home made besan ke laddoo. We used to get up at 2 AM and give missed call to our neighbors to wake them up. Except my father, l, my mother, sisters and brother would be ready to go to the very famous Ganesh temple in Jaipur situated at Motidungri. With the families of 5-6 neighbors and friends we used to walk around 5-6 kms to reach the temple. I am not a deeply religious person, but used to wait whole year for this day as it was a lot of fun to walk in a group and meet some other groups on the way as well… And if we would be late to reach the temple, then there would be a very long queue. So to avoid that, we used to reach very early in the temple, and come back by city bus. After reaching home, my mother would start preparation for food and that would be a very traditional rajasthani meal, Panchmel daal, Baati (traditional Rajasthani food),Besan churma,Churma (wheat flour),Gatte ki sabzi and for prasad, Besan ke Laddu.

This whole meal has a lot of desi ghee in it, so it was prepared just once a year. For besan ke ladoo, mother used to roast besan and later I used to bind it as laddu.

Manish and Apoorva both relish besan ke ladoo, so I prepare them every year. But somehow this year at Ganesha Chaturthi I couldn’t, so tried to compensate at the occasion of Deepawali..

Ingredients :
Besan :1/2 kg
Powered sugar :1/2 kg(but it is always better if you can get bura sugar)
Desi ghee : as per requirement
Cardamom powder :1/4th tsp

Process:
Take besan and sieve it to avoid all the lumps.

Take a heavy bottomed pan, heat it and add desi ghee and besan. Roast it nicely. While roasting you might feel that more ghee is required and besan is thick to stir.

But don’t add more ghee because when slowly besan starts getting roasted, it’s stiffness loosens slowly and stirring becomes very easy. And if in the beginning we will add a lot of ghee to make stirring easy, later besan would be very runny and difficult to bind.

Now, how to check whether besan is completely roasted or not? It’s very easy – just taste a little bit – if besan is not sticking to your tongue, it has roasted perfectly!

One more very important thing to take care. When you feel that within 4-5 minutes besan would be completely roasted, switch off gas and transfer besan into a flat broad pan to cool down. Remember that besan is still very hot, so during the process of cooling down, the trapped heat will roast it completely.

In between sieve powderd sugar or bura .

When besan is just warm enough to touch comfortably, add bura /powderd sugar. Never add powderd sugar in hot roasted besan otherwise sugar will melt and mix will be very thin and runny and difficult to bind.