Yendu Kobbari Rava Laddu ~ Dry Coconut Rava Laddu

Letter ‘Y’ was one of the tough letters in this A-Z Challenge, Journey Through Telangana Cuisine. However, dishes for these two letters were decided months ago, when I first made the initial list back in Fall. When I seriously started working on this BM couple of months ago, I realized there might be a hole in my list. For both these letters I had listed down dishes from Hyderabadi cuisine and since Hyderabad is the capital city of Telangana, I overlooked the hole. Since I am focus on Telugu cuisine, I was unsure if I really wanted to do Hyderabad cuisine and take a shortcut for the tough letters.

I could not think of any vegetable or ingredient in Telugu that starts with ‘Y’. All I could think of was yalakulu, cardamoms in English. I even decided to do yalakula chai; elaichi chai or cardamom flavored tea. As I put my brain cells to extra work, I figured I could get around by twisting the letters and decided to do yendu (endu) kobbari rava laddu ~ dry coconut rava ladoo. Usually fresh grated coconut is used but to fit my theme, I used dry coconut flakes 🙂

When talking to my cousin A about this recipe, she mentioned that her nanamma (paternal grandmother) did not use milk when preparing these laddus, though lot of people use it for binding the laddu. I tried making without milk but could not shape the laddu and I did not want to add more ghee either, which also aides in binding. I ended up using some milk.

Husband liked the laddu a lot and since I used less ghee in this preparation than in the other two recipes I posted for this BM; senagapindi laddu & neyicheni muddalu, he wants me to make this more often as it has less ghee.

Yields: 12 depending on the size

Ingredients:

4 - 5 tbsp. Ghee ~ Clarified Butter
8-10 Cashews broken into small pieces
2 - 3 tsp. Raisins
1 cup coarse Sooji ~ Upma Rava
½ cup dry Coconut Flakes
¾ - 1 cup Sugar (I used 1 cup and check notes below)
½ tsp. Cardamom Seeds, powdered
¼ cup Milk (I used less than ¼ cup, about 2-3 tablespoon milk)

Preparation:

Heat one tablespoon of ghee in a nonstick pan, roast cashews and raisins until cashews turn brown and raisins puff up. Remove from the pan and keep aside.
In the same pan add another tablespoon of ghee and roast coconut flakes until light brown. Remove from the pan and keep aside.
In the same pan add another 2 tablespoons of ghee and roast sooji, stirring constantly for even roasting until light brown.
Reduce the flame, add raisins, cashews and coconut flakes back to the pan. Add cardamom powder and sugar and stir properly until everything mixes well.
Turn off the fire and transfer the mixture to a plate or a bowl.
Let the mixture cool for about 5 - 10 minutes, until it is cool enough to handle with hand.
Microwave milk for 30 seconds.
Add some milk to a small portion of laddu mixture, mix lightly and shape it into small balls or laddu. Do not add all the milk at once. Once the milk + rava mixture cools and dries, it cannot be shaped into laddu. Hence add little milk at a time to small portion of rava mixture and shape the laddu.
Leave the laddu on the countertop until cool & dry, and then store in an airtight container.

Note:

I used 1 cup of sugar and also raisins. I felt the laddu were a bit sweet. If using raisins, use less than 1 cup of sugar.
I used 5 tablespoon of ghee when preparing the laddu. I used only 2-3 tablespoon of ghee for roasting all the ingredients and added rest of the ghee to the rava mixture hoping it would aide in binding. It did not and had to use milk.

This day in 2009: Cucumber Watermelon Cooler
This day in 2014: Aloo ke Gutke from Uttarakhand
This day in 2015: Baked Masala Chicken Wings
Events: This post also goes to A-Z Challenge for day 25, letter 'Y'.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 63