Oats Rava Laddoo

Traditional Rava laddoo gets a slightly healthy makeover with the addition of ground oats in this recipe. Saw this being made on a Telugu cooking show couple of days ago and then tried it today.
Oats are lightly roasted and ground. They are then added to the regular rava laddoo ingredients -- rava/ semolina, sugar, dry grated coconut and dry fruits. Melted ghee and warm milk act as glue to hold these laddoos together.

These tasted exactly like the regular rava laddoos. My 2 year loved them (she loves anything with nuts & raisins in it), but I was surprised that my super picky son also liked them. They are quick and very easy to make -- takes about 15 minutes to make the entire batch. Also these are goof-proof, especially for people like me who are prone to screw up consistency of sugar syrup, this is the perfect recipe :-)

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Rava Kesari (Godhuma rawa Kesari)

Blogging Marathon# 43: Week 2/ Day 3

Theme: Navarthri -- Festival Special

Dish: Rava Kesari (Godhuma rawa Kesari)

Here's another simple sweet dish that is made for festivals. Kesari can be made with either sooji/ semolina or godhuma rava. I like the fine godhuma rawa/ dalia because texture-wise it is like sooji, but with the added goodness of the wholewheat instead of refined sooji.

Since my husband is milk-phobic, I usually skip it or add only just a little bit to give the kesari/ halwa some creaminess. It takes about 12~15 minutes total to make this dish and all you need is 3~4 ingredients.

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Rava Idlis using Instant Rava Idli Mix

I'm back to blogging for 3 days in a row this time with Blogging Marathon # 17 (BM#17). Slight change in the format, but same idea of cooking with a theme for consecutive days instead of a week. I'm joining the marathon for 2 weeks this time and my first theme is "Cooking with Ready made Stuff". 

I don't usually buy ready to cook food, even though I know some of them really good and they are fast and convenient. I try to make everything from scratch because I keep stock of the basic ingredients needed for most of the dishes and it doesn't seem cost effective to buy ready to cook foods again. But recently my work got a lot busier and I find that I don't have much energy left to make anything even over the weekends. So when I saw Valli's themes and saw this theme, I wanted to try some of the "ready to cook food" and see how they taste. 

For the first dayof BM# 17, I made Rava Idlis using MTR brand "Instant Rawa idli mix". These are super simple to make, all you need is some yogurt and chopped cilantro. I used greek yogurt mixed with water. The mix has all the seasonings, cashews, tempering ingredients and the final product was excellent, given the minimum amount of work put into it.

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Rava Laddoo for Indian Cooking Challenge

Talented Srivalli of Cooking 4 all Seasons and Spice your Life blogs came up with this brilliant idea called Indian Cooking Challenge. Members would be making authentic Indian dishes from a tried and tasted recipe and posting them on the same day (how cool is that..). This month's recipe is Srivalli's Rava Laddoo.

Here' her recipe:
Ingredients:

Semolina/ Rava - 1 cup

Sugar - 1 cup

Ghee - 25 gms

Milk - 25 ml

Cardamom powder - a pinch

Cashew nuts - 10 whole nuts

Raisins - 10 nos

Grated fresh coconut - 25 gms

Method:

• Heat 2 tsp of ghee in a kadai. Once the ghee is hot enough, simmer the flame and roast cashew nuts and raisins. Once the raisins balloon up, remove. Then roast the grated coconut. Remove once done. Keep all these aside.
• Add the remaining ghee and roast the rava till its well roasted and aroma starts coming out.
• In a bowl, take all the roasted rava, nuts, Coconut and add the Cardamom powder. Then add the sugar. Mix well.
• Then slowly add the warm milk into the bowl. Check if you are able to gather as balls. When you find that milk added is enough to get you laddoos transfer it back to the kadai and cook on low heat for 2 minutes. Mix well and then cover it and let it rest for 2 minutes. Then immediately make balls or laddoos.