½-¾cupgranulated white sugar100-150 grams, adjust sweetness to taste
¼cup +1 tablespoongheemelted
2tablespoonscashewsbroken
1tablespoongolden raisins
½teaspooncardamom powder
1-2tablespoonsmore ghee or milkas needed
Instructions
Take a heavy bottom and put it on medium-low heat. Add rava to it. Using a spatula, stir continuously and roast the rava until it's fragrant. This takes around 7 to 8 minutes. Once roasted, rava becomes aromatic. You don't want to brown the rava for this recipe so be careful and stir all the time and roast on medium-low heat only. Once done, transfer it to a plate and allow it to cool.
Once the rava is done, add sugar to a blender. I have used granulated white sugar here, do not replace this with powdered/icing sugar. Blend the sugar into a powder.
Once the rava has cooled down a bit, transfer it to the same blender (along with sugar, no need to remove the sugar from the blender).Pulse few times to blend the rava as well. Do not make a fine rava powder here, we want the ladoos to have some texture. Set this aside.
Now, heat a pan on medium heat and add 1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon melted ghee to it. Add broken cashews and roast for 1 minute until they start turning light brown in color.Add raisins at at this point, cook for around 45 seconds until raisins plump. Remove pan from heat.
Add the powdered rava and sugar mixture to the hot ghee and nuts in the pan. Also add 1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder.
Using a spatula, mix until everything is well combined. The rava should be nicely mixed with the ghee. The ghee is hot, so don't use your hands at this point. Now, let this cool down a bit until you can manage to handle the mixture in your hands.
While the mixture is still warm (but not hot), take a small portion of the mixture and press between your palm for 30 seconds. Then roll between your palm to give it a round shape. Make all ladoos similarly. You will get around 11 to 12 ladoo from the mixture.
If you are unable to make ladoos, and it's breaking, add 1 tablespoon melted ghee and bind. Start with 1 tablespoon and add more as needed. You can also add 1-2 tablespoons of milk in place of ghee here but keep in mind that adding milk reduces the shelf life of the ladoos and also changes the texture a bit.
Store the ladoos at room temperature for 10 days and enjoy.
Notes
Roasting the rava correctly is the most important thing in the recipe. You need to make sure the rava is roasted else the ladoos will taste raw. You also need to make sure that you don't burn the rava while roasting it, we don't want to brown it for this recipe. That changes the taste.
If you want to make these with less ghee, an option is to replace half of ghee with milk. However ladoos made with milk will not last that long compared to the ones made with ghee only. The taste will also differ.
If you want to add coconut, use dry coconut or desiccated coconut and add around 1/4 cup of it. Add it towards the last 2 to 3 minutes of roasting the rava.
These ladoos are sweet, I have used 150 grams of sugar here (3/4 cup). If you want less sweet ladoos, use 3/4 cup minus 2 tablespoons sugar which will be 125 grams.