Figs, Date & Nut Bars (Anjeer-Khajoor Burfi)

Belated Diwali wishes to all of you. It was a very quite festival for us this year and the weather didn't cooperate either. It was gloomy and raining the whole day. I'm glad that my husband was home for Diwali, first time in the past 2~3 years. Even after seeing all the yummy Diwali snacks on Facebook and Instagram, I wasn't motivated enough to make anything.

But then I felt bad for the family and decided to make something less guilty yet satisfying. After leafing through the cookbooks, I found this fig, date & nuts burfi in Sanjeev Kapoor's Sweet temptations. It has no added sugar and the sweetness comes from dried figs and dates.

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Balehannu Halwa (Coconut - Banana Halwa)

This is the final dish I made for Sankranthi. The actual festival was very low key, but we are heading to our cousin's place this weekend for some belated celebrations. My cousin puts up a beautiful golu and she also celebrates 'bhogi pallu' for the kids.
As I was thinking of what to bring, I found this interesting halwa with coconut and banana in 'Vegetarian Cookbook of India' cookbook by Mridula Baljekar. I had bananas that needed to be used up before leaving for the weekend, so this was a perfect recipe to make good use of them.

Also the recipe uses dry grated coconut cooked in some whole milk to give the texture of fresh coconut. Finding good fresh coconut is a little difficult here, but I always have dry grated coconut in my fridge, so this is a very convenient recipe to make for me.

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Mohanthal for ICC (Gujarati Besan-Mawa Burfi)

Valli picked a simple and delicious Gujarati special sweet for this month's Indian Cooking Challenge (ICC). I am a big fan of burfis/ fudges because they are easy to make and don't need too many ingredients. Today's burfi is a Gujarati special and is made with besan, mawa/ khoya, sugar and nuts. 

This sweet is very simple to make and can be done in less than an hour. Only complicated thing involved is to know when the burfi reaches the right consistency. I took it out of the pan a few seconds early and the burfi didn't set and was a little sticky. So I put it back in the pan and cooked it for another couple minutes to get the nice, soft, melt-in-the-mouth burfi. It does require quite a bit of sugar and ghee, so eat them in moderation. They can be stored in an airtight container for up to 7~10 days.

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