Baked karanji for Diwali

I know Diwali is come and gone, but indulge me with this and the next post. I did make the kranji and the savory shankarpali, just never got around to posting it before Diwali. I had a busy week making the faral (snacks or munchis, mostly fried, like this one), cleaning the house and cooking for five families for the weekend Diwali bash. Not much time left for posting or visiting a lot of blogs.

After the high of instant coconut barfi, I decided to google baked karanji and found a recipe here. The brilliant lady had used frozen Pillsbury Pie Crust to make the casing for karanji. Karanji for the uninitiated is half moons of falky dough, stuffed with delicious sweet filling of coconut, sugar and nuts and deep fried in ghee. In the interest of heart healthy goodness, I did not want to deep fry my karanjis in ghee, so I was all for baking the pie crust dough.

For the filling:
1 cup fresh coconut, grated (frozen is fine too)
1/2 cup sugar
4 – 5 cardamoms, crushed into powder
A few nuts like cashews or almonds, roasted and coarsely chopped
A handful of raisins

Method:

In a heavy bottom kadhai or a non-stick pan, roast the coconut and sugar on low heat till the coconut starts to turn a little red and the sugar melts.

Turn off the heat; add cardamom powder and the nuts. Let cool.

Unroll the pie dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it thinner.

With a cookie cutter or the lid of a ricotta cheese container, cut rounds. Save the scrapes, wedge them and reuse to cut some more circles.

Place a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle, run a finger dipped in some milk around the edges, fold the circle in half and seal the edges shut.
Keep aside on a cookie sheet, covered with a moist towel. This takes a little time so if possible keep the prepared karanjis in the fridge till you are ready to bake.
Preheat the oven to 350 and place the karanjis in the oven. Bake for 10 – 15 minutes till they start turning golden brown.

Take out and let them cool before eating them.

Note: The dough is a little salty to pass off as authentic karanji but apart from that the crust is as flaky and crunchy as the original.
The dough gets softer after a lot of handling on account of the amount of butter it has. Try to make this in the day, when you don't have to switch on the overhead lights.

Next time I will try it with Puff Pastry Sheets rolled thinner to avoid a lot of flakes.

Instant coconut barfi (naralachi vadi)

Diwali is to Hindus what Christmas is to Christians. And though I have been a big fan of Diwali, it lost its charm when I came to US about eight years ago. It is just not the same without friendly neighbors who visit each other and exchange snacks and pleasantries. The neighborhood brightly lit with diyas (clay lamps) and electric lights on the rooftops; the ubiquitous rangoli adorning every threshold and front yard; cousins and friends bursting firecrackers and little children lighting sparklers.

Growing up, I never liked to get involved with making sweets of any kind, especially ladoos. I found the process of making ball after ball of sugary dough tiresome. I enjoyed eating them, nevertheless. But it was after the Diwali was over that I looked forward to my mom’s naralyachi vadi or coconut barfi (fudge). She would receive a lot of coconuts as she went for haldi kunku and after all the Diwali sweets were over, she would make the barfi.

I didn’t mind grating the coconut or watching over the milk as it boiled in the heavy copper vessel for hours. When the milk had reduced to almost one third, mom would toast the coconut and add it to the milk along with sugar. The whole mixture would then be boiled down to the consistency of mawa, and then set in plates greased with ghee. The delicious diamonds of goodness tasted like biting into a kalakand/ milk cake/ mava cake laced with coconut and lightly flavored with cardamom.

I am tempted to make it every year but chicken out thinking about all the stirring and cooking it involves. This year Google, an encyclopedia of brilliant ideas and shortcut recipes for lazy cooks like me, came to the rescue. I found this quick recipe for kalakand at Bong Mom’s Cookbook and a light bulb went off somewhere in the lazy front of my mind. Coconut plus kalakand equals coconut barfi. So here’s my instant version of my mom’s coconut barfi.

Ingredients:
14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
15 oz tub of ricotta cheese
1 cup sweetened flake coconut
4-5 cardamoms (elaichi), crushed into powder
1 tsp of ghee (optional)
1 microwave proof shallow baking pan or casserole dish

Notice how crumbly my vadi is. That is because I did not wait for it to cool down before taking the knife to it.

Method:
Combine the condensed milk and ricotta cheese in the casserole dish. Zap it in the microwave for five minutes.
Meanwhile, heat a heavy bottom kadhai or a non stick pan and add the coconut to it. Turn the heat to low and roast it till the coconut turns golden brown in color. Keep a close watch on it or the coconut will burn in two seconds.
Take the casserole dish out after five minutes, stir the c.milk and ricotta and zap again for five minutes. By now, the aromas in the house are that of boiling milk. The ricotta and c. milk should be changing color to a pale white and homogenizing. As this cycle ends, mix in the coconut and cardamom powder. Zap for another five minutes.
The vadi is almost there with ricotta turning a grainy texture and getting darker in color. Now, keep zapping every minute for another three to four minutes and checking in between for a not too dry and not too wet consistency. Add the ghee at this point if you so desire.
Once you are satisfied with the consistency (I prefer it on the dry side) spread the mixture evenly in the dish and smooth it down with the back of a spoon. Wait for it to cool down before cutting it into squares or diamonds. If not, you risk getting a crumbly vadi.
Garnish with almonds, pistachios or in my case with dried cranberries.

Notes:
While not exactly rich in taste like my mom’s vadi, these tasted pretty good for about 20 minutes of intermittent zapping in the microwave.

T’s comment, “This tastes like milk cake with coconut.” Mission accomplished.