Besan Laddu:

Besan laddu is one of the most popular Indian sweets prepared during the time of Deepavali or Diwali festival. Besan laddu is pretty simple and contains three main ingredients- Gram flour/ Besan, ghee and sugar. These melt in a mouth laddu’s are my family’s favourite.

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Ingredients:

Gram flour/ Besan – 3 cups

Sugar – 2 ¼ cups

Ghee – 1 cup

Dry fruits – 1 cup

Cardamom powder – 1 tea spoon

Method:

-Chop dry fruits. I normally use half cup of cashew bits and half cup of slivered Almond bits.

-Dry roast almond and cashew bits and keep aside.

-Powder sugar and keep aside.

-Take one thick bottomed wok, roast Besan in very low temperature.

-When it is a little hot, start adding ghee little by little during the roasting process.

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-Don’t add or pour all the ghee at one go. It will not help to roast evenly and it will make muddy consistency, and will affect in even roasting.

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– I took exactly 30 minutes over a very small flame.

-When it roasts and after adding all the ghee, mixture becomes very runny and colour will turn into reddish brown.

-At this time your house will filled with roasted flour’s aroma. This is the time you should switch off the gas and leave this mixture to cool completely.

-It will take anywhere between 30 to 40 minutes.

-Now add powdered sugar, cardamom powder and roasted dry fruits and mix everything properly.

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-Now start using your hand and mix it once and start making small roundels by taking very little mixture at a time.

-At this time, you will feel that the laddus are a little wet and glossy and shining.

-Arrange these over a clean, dry platter. Because of the wetness, it tends to loosen its shape.

-After some time (one hour) laddu’s will be dry and glossy texture will vanish.

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-I usually take these shapeless roundels and once again try to give shape and store it in an airtight container.

Healthy Chocolate Brownie:

Here healthy refers to ‘No maida’ and personally I prefer to include healthy flours instead of maida and experiment with the same. Today I made this multi millet flour brownie. These brownies turned out to be a soft, fudgy and delicious and no one cribbed about the altogether elimination of all-purpose flour in this bake. It was so delicious, and my dear hubby was all into praise!!! That was the highlight and I don’t get this every day. Yes!!! I need to work hard for it.: D He usually doesn’t prefer to compromise on basic taste. Today I did achieve to get that “classic brownie” taste without any compromising.

This is an excellent,an easy recipe which you can prepare in advance when you are entertaining guests and have many other stuffs to prepare. It is a perfect dessert option along with an ice cream. Re- heat before serving to give an extra zing with cold ice cream.

Ingredient:

Sprouted finger millet/ragi flour – 1 cup

Mix millet flour – 1 cup

Walnuts – 1 cup

Eggs – 2

Cooking Milk chocolate slab – 300 grams

Cocoa powder – 2 table spoons

Butter – 100 grams

Curd – ½ cup

Light brown sugar – 1  cup

Method:

  • Assemble all the materials and keep it ready.
  • Put butter and cooking chocolate in a sauce pan and melt.

  • Add sugar and switch off the gas.
  • Cool this mixture for 2 minutes.
  • Add in beaten eggs and curd. Mix thoroughly.

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  • This is your wet ingredient and keep it aside.
  • Break walnuts into tiny chunks.
  • Now mix all the dry ingredients, two flours, cocoa powder and walnut chunks in one bowl.

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  • Dry mix all the dry ingredients and pour wet ingredient mixture into this bowl and fold in.
  • Pre-heat oven at 180 C

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  • Pour this batter in a greased, butter paper lined baking tin for 40 to 50 minutes or until knife comes out clean while checking the doneness.
  • After it is done, remove from the oven and cool.

 -Serve hot brownies as it is or with vanilla ice cream.

Note: If your cooking chocolate has sugar, please reduce the sugar quantity to ¾ cup.