Rava Badam Laddoos

It's sacrilegious for a Bengali to confess that she likes another sweetmeat more than rasogola, pantua and the likes but I do. I used to stay in a primarily Kannadiga hostel during my first year in Bangalore. Of course, the cook there tried her best to put me off Kanada food for life and she did quite well till Diwali. Most of the in-state girls went home for the festival and came back with jars and steel dabbas of home made sweetmeats and desserts to share with friends in the true Diwali spirit. Note I say most!

A couple of days, after Diwali my neighbor who had been visiting her parents in north Karnataka knocked my door hard uncharacteristically early in the morning. Groggy, concerned and angry all at the same time, I opened the door only to have something shoved into my mouth. Jaggery, coconut, dal and ghee exploded in my mouth. Voila, so happened my quick induction to the legion of Kannada sweet lovers!

If you haven't guessed yet, she had fed me a piece of obbattu. Over the years, I have relished much green payasa, huggi ,Dharwad pedas and kajayas.

Couple of Diwalis back, stuck in rural Indiana, I was craving for Kannada sweets. Well aware of my shortcomings and in the absence of recipes, I went about recreating from my remembrance of taste, Rava Laddoos and Besan Burfi. Why I picked them? I figured they would be the easiest and I wasn't wrong! They turned out exactly like a friend's mother and the batch of 20 was soon finished by N and I. However, me being me, was not satisfied with just recreating; I had to add my own. So the next time I made Rava Badam Laddoos and Besan Pista Burfis which have since been established as N and my Diwali tradition.

Rava Badam Laddoos

Ingredients:

1 cup fine wheat sooji/rava

3/4 cup fine sugar or 1 cup crystal sugar

3 cloves

3 tsp raisins

1/2 tsp cardamom powder

3/4 cup water

2 tbsp ghee for frying + 1/2 cup for badam coat

Few strands of saffron (optional)

1/2 cup almond slivers

Method:

For Laddoo -

• Slightly crush cloves.
• Heat ghee in a heavy bottom pan and add cloves and raisins. Fry for 20 seconds or till the cloves and raisins don't puff. Take care not to burn them.
• Add sooji and keep frying over medium heat. Cook till sooji turns red and emits a delicious aroma. Transfer the fried sooji onto a dish.
• In another pan heat water,sugar and saffron(if using) to a rolling boil.Remove from heat.
• Mix sooji and cardamom powder into the sugar syrup. The mixture will be very watery at this stage. Cover and let stand for 30 minutes. The sooji should have absorbed the syrup by then and reached a dry halwa like consistency.
• Apply some ghee on your palms and make balls out of the mixture.

For Badam Coat-

• Dry roast the almond slivers and coarse grind them to crumbs.
• Add the almond crumbs to 1/2 cup of ghee and mix well into a slightly runny paste.
• Dip the laddoos in the paste and allow them to cool on a dish. The ladoos should have a thin layer of badam paste. Wipe off excess paste.
• Once cooled, store in air tight jars. They stay good for a fortnight that is if they last that long.

Makes 16-18 laddoos.