We have handpicked some simple sweets you can easily make on the occasion of Rakhi, a Kerala famous sweet dish to Maharashtrian sweet dishes and some more sweets from around the country. All of these are no-bake and need some cooking time, plenty of sugar, or ample refrigeration time for the sweets to set into their forms. Rest assured you can make all of them ahead of time and take it out with a flourish on the day of the festival.
1.Rava Laddo
(Makes 20 ladoos)
Ingredients:
- 250 gm semolina
- 200 gm granulated sugar
- 90 gm ghee
- 45 gm cashews and almonds, roughly chopped
- ½ tsp cardamom powder
Instructions
- Take a nonstick pan, keep it on low heat, and add about a teaspoon of ghee. Let it heat and once it releases an aroma add the rava and roast it until a nutty aroma is released. Make sure the sooji or rava doesn't change color. This takes approximately 7 minutes, not more.
- Let the roasted rava cool down, once it's cool, transfer it to a mixer grinder. Grind until the rava is a fine powder. Then add the granulated sugar and grind again.
- Once both are a fine powder, transfer the contents of the jar to a wide bowl.
- Heat the rest of the ghee in the same pan and add the chopped nuts to it. Brown them over low flame and add them to the rava, and powdered sugar. Add the cardamom powder too and use a spoon to mix.
- Once it's warm enough to use your hand, start making ladoos. If they are crumbly, add a little melted ghee until it's enough to form ladoos.
- Use your hands to form tight ladoos and let them cool completely before storing them in an airtight container.
2.Kharvas
Ingredients
- 235 ml full-fat milk
- 65 gm milk powder
- 130 gm thick curd
- 1 can of condensed milk (around 300 grams)
- ¼ tsp cardamom powder
Instructions
- Take a big bowl, pour milk into it, add the milk powder, and mix with a whisk to combine until no lumps remain.
- Add the curd and condensed milk into the milk and mix to combine.
- Transfer this thick liquid into a round pan, and sprinkle the cardamom powder over it. You'll be steaming this.
- Cover the whole thing with aluminum foil so water isn't able to enter the Kharvas.
- Fill the steamer with water and place the metal pan in it. A hack to not owning a steamer, is using a pressure cooker minus the whistle.
- Cook for 30 minutes keeping a watch in case the steamer runs out of water, so you can refill it.
- Once the cooking period is over, remove the foil, and do the toothpick test. Insert into the mithai to check if it's clean, if it's not, it needs more cooking time.
- Remove the pan from the steamer and let it cool then refrigerate for one hour.
- After an hour, take out the mithai. It might release extra water. Cut it into desired shapes and serve.
Note: In case you have colostrum milk, use it for this recipe. The sweet is named after the first milk produced by a mammal after birth. If you have colostrum milk, boil it 4 times in around 1 cup of sugar and boil it to reduce the quantity to the same quantity as this current recipe.
3.Banana Halwa
(Serves 6)
Ingredients
- 3 Banana (the long kind)
- 230 gm jaggery, crushed
- 50 gm sugar, unrefined
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- 4 tbsp ghee
- 10-15 cashew nuts
- 1 cardamom, powdered
Instructions
- Peel the bananas, chop them down, and puree them in a blender.
- Take a thick-bottomed saucepan and transfer the banana puree to it. Keep the heat on medium flame. Then add the jaggery and sugar and stir to mix.
- Once the mixture starts boiling, add the lemon juice. This process prevents the mixture from getting a burfi-like consistency.
- Once the mixture turns glossy, start adding ghee one tablespoon at a time. Let the mixture thicken. You'll notice the mixture starts to leave the sides of the saucepan. As more seconds pass, and you keep adding ghee and stirring, you'll notice the mixture spewing a whitish froth.
- Add the powdered cardamom, next, mix and then finally add the chopped cashew nuts and mix.
- The mixture will start turning pale and slightly foamy, once it's at that stage, turn off the heat.
- Put into a greased serving bowl.
Note: Turn into halwa bites by thickening the mixture more, and adding more bananas in the beginning. You can cook until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and like popular mithai like Sondesh and Mysore Pak, this too can be refrigerated, to solidify and then cut into squares or rectangles.