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 – 3/4th
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
