Rawa Ladoo for Indian Cooking Challenge

The day I received the mail from Srivalli announcing this month's recipe for the Indian Cooking Challenge, I wanted to be part of the event. I anticipate a lot of learning from this -recipes tried and tested and tips from other bloggers. I conveniently blame it on a lot of factors that I did not attempt the trial reicpe until 9 this morning, local time, which is 5 and 1/2 hours behind IST and there , I have a reminder in my mail box. And then I gave myself the 'first-gear start'. And what a race....Tuesday..OIL BATH, Nothing in the fridge to just reheat, Wimbledon starts'12 noon local time...and anything more??? Oh yes, I have piled up four days' ironing watching Federer or Williams or Murray at the best of their best !!! With all this threatening me, I ask myself shall I give it a pass? Sigh!!!! But amidst all this I did succeed making the rawa ladoo both ways listed by Srivalli!!! I just needed to know if I get more number of ladoos following one or the other :)

Method 1 :

Rawa 1cup

Sugar 1 cup

Ghee 25 grams

Milk 25 ml

Cardamon powder a pinch

Cashews and raisins few

Grated fresh coconut 25 grams

Heat part of ghee in a kadai and roast cashews and the raisins. Keep aside.

Roast coconut in the same kadai until a bit dry and keep alongwith cashews and raisins.

Add the rest of the ghee to the kadai and roast rawa until golden.

Mix all ingredients except the milk in a bowl. Add the warm milk to this mixture gradually, testing with each addition if you are able to gather balls of the mixture.

When you are able to do so, stop adding milk.

Put it all back in the kadai on the stove and blend on the lowest flame for 2 minutes.

Switch off the fire; cover kadai with a lid and rest it for a further 2 minutes.

Make ladoos while still warm.

Method 2 (My usual one )

Rawa 1 cup

Sugar 1 cup

Cashews and raisins few

Cardamon powder 1/4 teaspoon

Ghee about 5 tablespoons

Roast rawa (without adding ghee) until golden. When slightly cool run in your mixie and powder as fine as possible.

Powder the sugar.

Roast the cashews and raisins in some ghee.

Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.

Heat ghee in a kadai until warm but not smoking.

Add ghee in small quantities to the dry mixture and gather in balls.

Incidentally both methods gave the same number of ladoos. I halved the ingredients and the yield was 10 pieces (probably smaller than what Srivalli predicted) in both methods.

Since the method 1 does not involve any pounding, sifting etc., I shall mail this to the dorm living girls (Niki in her blog gently hinted that this blog was supposed to be student oriented) to appease their sweet craving once in a while.