Coconut and Milk Barfi - Indian Sweet

It is absolutely overwhelming when anyone requests for a recipe, I want to post it right away. However, with a 9-5 job, family, friends, books, my plants, and my craziness for cooking, I sometimes wish days were longer than 24 hours. This one is for one of the nicest and prettiest woman I have known, 'T' Di, thank you for those kind words, they indeed mean a lot to me.

So it was sometime last week when I wanted to make a simple, ‘on the burner’ dessert at home, ‘on the burner’ as my Microwave Oven is down for close to a week now and I have not yet managed to open a ticket with the vendor to fix it. Spoke to Mum and she mentioned a Barfi she knew of made with Milk Powder and desiccated Coconut, I was instantaneously interested. I ordered the required ingredients from BigBasket and waited for them to arrive. Once they arrives, I made them for the weekend.  Initially, I told ‘A’ they were store-bought, he believed me and I was elated! (They were seriously that good).

Ingredients:

Desiccated Coconut – 100 gms

Milk Powder – 140 gms

Milk – 3/4^th Cup

Powdered Sugar – ½ Cup

Cardamom Powder – ½ tsp (I pounded 6-7 whole Green Cardamoms for this)

Any dry fruit of your choice – chopped – I had Raisins, so I cut them in half and used them, you can use broken cashews, sliced almonds, sliced pistachios or none – to your taste.

Unsalted Butter – 60 gms

Clarified Butter / Ghee – ½ tsp

Method:

Heat a Pan and drop the butter in and let it melt, bring down the heat to low

Add the Milk and mix well

Add the Milk Powder, little at a time and keep mixing, make sure no lumps remain

Add the desiccated coconut and mix in with a spatula

Add the powdered Sugar and mix it in, add the cardamom powder as well (be careful while adding sugar, don’t add all of it at once, you might like it a little less or more sweet than me, mix little at a time and do a taste test to check if the sweetness is right for you. Many a times I have added all the sugar at once, as recommended by the recipe and it has been way sweeter than my taste).

Keep cooking this on low - medium flame, stir continuously to make sure it does not get burnt from the bottom, cook until the consistency is dense and the mixture starts to leave the sides of the Pan. Once the right consistency is reached, turn off the gas and set aside

Take a plate where you want this mixture to set, I used a simple stainless steel plate with about .5 cm sides as I did not want my Barfis to be very thick.

Take ½ a tsp of clarified butter and butter the surface of the plate so that the Barfis come off easily after they are set, pour the mixture in. Using a spoon spread the mixture on the plate, make sure the thickness is the same throughout, else you will get Barfis with uneven thickness, this process takes a little while, be patient.

Once done sprinkle the chopped dry fruit on the mixture, use the spoon and press them in lightly.

Keep it in the refrigerator and let it set. I kept it for 1.5 hours. Take it out, run a knife and cut slices as per your wish.

Light the burner again, and heat the plate a little (30 seconds should do it), so that the clarified butter melts at the bottom and it is much easier to separate the pieces from the plate. Using the same knife to separate the pieces and enjoy!

Coconut and Milk Barfi can be refrigerated for up to a week, though this batch only 48 hours at my home :D