7 cups to Heaven - 7-cup Barfi for Janmashtami

For the longest time, I stayed away from even attempting to make Indian sweets. I even stayed away from thinking about making them. When it came to celebrating festivals, I always made my own rules. Why might Krishna only want uppu seedai and vella seedai for Janmashtami. Why not chocolate cookies? Or buns? Why make Indian sweets and savouries for Deepavali. Why not cookies and cakes again? You get the drift, don't you? I simply didn't want to move out of my comfort zone. So, I found every excuse not to.

A few years ago, I was a visiting with a friend and she had made a snack with beaten rice and a sweet. I asked her if she'd brought the sweet from India or if one of her family members had visited. She told me that she'd made it herself. I immediately asked her for the recipe and made it soon after. Three years later, it remains the only Indian elbow greasy sweet I can make confidently. 

1 cup Ghee
1 cup Besan
1 cup Milk
1 cup Almond Meal/ Dessicated Coconut (or a combination of the two)
3 cups Sugar
Cardamom and Saffron to taste
1 tbsp Ghee for greasing the plate/cake tin

Grease a large thali or plate and keep aside. (I've even used cake tins when I didn't own a thali.)

Heat 1/2 cup ghee in a heavy bottomed pan. Add the besan and fry it until the raw smell of besan goes and you are left with the wonderful aroma. To this, add the milk carefully. Add all the other ingredients, including the remaining 1/2 cup ghee. Keep stirring until the mixture comes together and begins to leave the sides of the pan.

Transfer to the greased thali/plate and smooth the mixture down carefully. Cool it a little. Cut it into diamond shapes with a sharp knife or a pizza cutter. When fully cool, store the pieces in an air tight container.

Be sure to share this with your friends and family. You may want to hand out recipe cards with this as people are bound to ask you for the recipe. Especially if you're like me and no one associates any traditional sweets with you, they're probably thinking - if she can make it, why not I?

On that happy note, let me sign off while wishing all of you a Happy Janmashtami.

Check out some other not so traditional Janmashtami recipes on the blog here.

Eggless Butter Cookies

I have always loved this time of the year. It sort of marks the beginning of the festival season for me.  Janmashtami or Sri Krishna Jayanti is one of the more important festivals in my family. Now that I have a little Krishna of my own, it becomes even more important.

As always, there was some confusion about the dates. I just picked a date that was convenient to me and celebrated the festival. I have never tried making any traditional sweets. I was tempted to try the 7-cup cake, but better sense prevailed. I like the story of little Krishna loving butter and ghee, but I give my story a modern twist. I have believed that if Krishna lived in this day and age, he'd probably have liked chocolate and cookies just as much. So while Krishna must have had his fair share of seedai and murukku from the other households, my naivedyam this year was a plate of eggless butter cookies.

¾ cup(generous) Flour
1/8 tsp Baking Soda
¼ cup Powdered Sugar
1/3 cup Butter

1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C.

Melt the butter. Cream the sugar and the melted butter until well blended.

Sift the flour with the baking soda. Add this to the sugar-butter mixture. Add the vanilla essence. Make a dough and divide into small balls. Flatten each ball onto a cookie sheet and bake for 12-15 minutes.

Srijayanti is celebrated in my father's side of the family today. So, I am not late in wishing you all a very Happy Krishna Jayanti.

 

Eggless Chocolate Almond Cookies

Janmashtami! One of the more important festivals for my family. There seemed to be some confusion with the dates. Apparently, it was to be celebrated on the 13th, but everyone around me at work, was celebrating it on the 14th. Then Amma dropped the bombshell last afternoon. She said some folks were celebrating it next month. So, it didn't seem wrong to celebrate it on the 14th after all.

I didn't have the day off as many people in the city did. I thought a lot about what I wanted to make. Two years ago, I made chocolate chip buns for little Krishna. My philosophy is that had Krishna lived in this day and age, as a child he'd have loved Cadbury's. Along the same line of thought, I decided to make chocolate almond fudge this year. But I changed my mind and decided to bake cookies instead. They turned out absolutely divine and I do hope that Krishna had a bite too. A plate of chocolate almond cokies was my neivedyam this year.

¾ cup(generous) Flour

2 tbsp Cocoa Powder

1/8 tsp Cooking Soda

¼ cup Powdered Sugar

1/3 cup (generous) Ghee (Clarified Butter)

1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence

2 tbsp Almonds, slivered

Cream the sugar and the ghee until well blended.

Sift the flour with the soda. Add this to the sugar-ghee mixture. Add the vanilla essence. Make a dough and divide into small balls. Flatten each ball onto a cookie sheet and sprinkle the almonds on top. Bake for 20 minutes at 180 C.

Allow to cool and enjoy.

Chocolate Chip Buns

Janmashtami is a very important festival for us. At my mother's family home in Bombay, there are Bhajan sessions each evening for 8 days and not just the family, but the entire neighbourhood gets together to sing. Everyday, the idol of Krishna is dressed in a different form and there is a different Prasad each evening. On the last day, the children come dressed as Krishna and the Gopis and they get little treats from everyone.

At my parents’ place, Srijayanti is celebrated on one day and it is all about food, really. Fruits, savouries and sweets. I wanted to try out a sweet dish today. I thought about several things. My friend Prajakta said she’d come visiting with her daughter and offered to bring some kheer. The traditional sweet dish had been taken care of. Though I've always wondered how these traditions have come to be. Who decided that Krishna likes only seedai or aval? We were told that and we accepted it. I thought that if the Dashavatars had existed in this day and age, Krishna would have loved Cadbury's just as much as he enjoyed butter.

God does exist everywhere. And on a festival such as Janmashtami, when children don beautiful costumes and become little Krishnas and Gopis, I decided to make a little something that kids would love. And since it has no egg, onion or garlic, even traditionally speaking, it becomes worthy of being offered as naivedyam. The little one who came dressed as a Gopi yesterday to my place was dressed as Krishna the day before. So, here's my little treat for dear little Krishna on his birthday.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups Flour

1 1/2 tbsp Yeast

1 1/2 tbsp Oil

1 1/2 tbsp Sugar

3/4 tsp Salt

2 tbsp Chocolate Chips

3 tbsp Cocoa Butter Icing

1/4 cup Milk

1/4 cup Boiling Water

Oil for greasing bowl and baking tray

Coloured sugar confetti for decoration

Take a huge mixing bowl and place the oil, salt and sugar in it. Add boiling water and mix until the sugar dissolves. Add the milk now to bring the mixture to room temperature. Add the yeast and mix well. Add the flour, chocolate chips and 1 tbsp of cocoa butter icing and knead into a dough. Place the dough in a greased vessel and cover it with a damp muslin cloth. Allow to rise until double in size (roughly 45-50 minutes).

Knead the dough for a minute on a floured surface and then divide into 16 - 20 equal rounded portions and place them on a greased baking tray.

Allow to rise for 50-60 minutes and then bake in an oven at 400 F for 12-15 minutes.

When the buns are cool, spread a little cocoa butter icing on each and sprinkle with sugar confetti.

This is the stuff that dreams are made of. This was my first attempt at making sweet buns. The flavour was very similar to that of a chocolate doughnut and we could eat it with about 80% less guilt. Some of the buns have gone into the little one's tiffin for today and were also eaten for breakfast by S and his colleagues.

My first Janmashtami celebration cooking was a success. I'm sending this to Latha for her Janmashtami event. These buns were ideal for a breakfast on the go and I made them using left over Cocoa Butter Icing from S's birthday cake. So this is also my entry to the Weekend Breakfast Blogging # 15, the theme of which is Breakfast using Leftovers. WBB is the brainchild of Nandita of Saffron Trail and, after doing the rounds of different guest hosts' blogs, has come back to the Saffron Trail this month.

Yesterday was also the birthday of a very dear friend. Aarti: as promised, these are for you.