Aval Laddu | Poha Ladoo | Easy Krishna Jayanthi recipes

So friends, how did your Janmashtami celebs go this year? Mine was simple as usual with some homemade butter, sago kheer and aval kesari as neivedhyam to kutty krishna. This year I did not have a great mood to dress up little Dhruv like last year. U know why, we cut his hair last week :( I was saving the trip to the hair dresser so that I can tie his hair and dress him up like kutty krishna but he was getting very irritated with those particularly longer strands near the ears that we had to cut his hair. I lost all my enthu coz of that and so it was a simple krishna jayanthi yesterday with just homemade neivedhyam. 

Last year it was nice, we dressed him up in his dhothi and tied his hair and made him wear some of my jewellery and he was looking like a thoppa (paunch) ganapathy in a kutty krishna attire :) Maybe next year I should plan something different ! So now recipe of the day is a simple poha ladoo with just 2 main ingredients poha and jaggery. If you want you can use sugar in place of jaggery. Just replace jaggery with ½ cup sugar in the recipe. I love this one. Simple and easy to make. And for the past one week, this was satisfying my sudden cravings for a sweet or quick bite ! So off to the recipe..

Makes: 8 ladoos

I Took: 

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

I Used:

Poha/Aval/Rice Flakes	-	1 cup
Jaggery	-	¾ cup
Cardamom	-	1 no
Ghee	-	¼ cup
Cashew Nuts	-	3-4 nos
Raisins	-	6-8 nos

The Way:

1. Dry roast the poha for 3-4 minutes in low flame. It will become crunchy. Then transfer it to another plate/mixie jar and allow it to cool

2. Add cardamom and jaggery to the cooled poha and blend to make a fine powder

3. Heat the ghee in a pan and fry the caashews and raisins. Once the cashews turn golden brown and the raisins turn big, switch off the flame ( I also remove the pan from the flame else the residual heat will keep it warm for some more time)

4. Add the powdered poha-jaggery mix to the ghee. Mix well. Make sure there are no lumps

5. Now make small laddus when the mixture is warm

Notes:

• I use organic poha and organic jaggery. So there is not much impurities in them. If using normal poha dust away those ones that are visible before dry roasting them

• Some use milk instead of ghee to make these ladoos. If then use warm milk else it will be difficult to shape the ladoos. If then the ladoos must be consumed within a day or two as they do not have a great shelf life

• Grind the poha to a fine powder else it will be difficult to shape the ladoo

• If more cashews or bigger pieces of cashews are used then also it will be difficult to shape the ladoos

• These ladoos stay good and fresh for a week and make sure you store them in an air tight container

• If using sugar instead of jaggery, the method is the same. Instead of grinding jaggery grind ½ cup sugar

Cheers,

Chitz