Dry fruit laddu

Hello to all the readers of my first blog. It is a happy day today, as after contemplating for a long time to create a blog, but not working upon the thought, here I am, finally, writing before the year ends.

We all love good tasty food, and when anything favorite is cooked, we tend to overindulge. With kids who are foodies, variety of menu is essential. When winter approaches, eating more dry fruits is what I try to enforce, but it is an activity that they tend to avoid. Hence the best and easy method I follow, is to grind the dry fruits and make laddoos. The first recipe that I am sharing today is dry fruit laddoos, without sugar. Cooking is a personal style, hence it’s always good to try out the recipe according to one’s own preference.

Dry fruit laddu without sugar:

Ingredients:

250 gm each-Pistachios, Cashew-nuts, Almonds, Walnuts.

500 gm of dried dates, with seeds removed. (I use both types of dates -the dried as well as ripe depending on availability)

200 gm each -Dates, Figs, Apricots, and Raisins.

Depending upon personal preference for sweetness desired and the quality of these dry fruits used, the quantity needs to be adjusted. I love the crunch in the bite that the  figs add to the Laddu.

Note: This mentioned quantity of ingredients make too many laddus. You can  adjust all the dry fruits and use only as much as are required for consumption for your household. It is not essential one has to use all listed ingredients, but if done so then taste is very yum. Sometimes I totally avoid the dried form of dates and use only the ripe ones. We get very good quality and lots many varieties of dates here in the UAE.

Method:

Grind the nuts in the mixer to make a coarse powder. Chop the dried dates into very small pieces. Try to hunt for deseeded dates in the market; I had to deseed all the dates and chop them into very small pieces, since I could not find deseeded ones. Grind these small pieces to a near-fine powder state. Chop the other Dates, Figs, Apricots and Raisins into small pieces and grind them in the mixer. Since these fruits are not completely dry, it appears to be a difficult task to grind them as they stick to the mixer blades.  To make this easier, mix them with the coarsely ground nut powder and then together grind at a higher grinder adjustment. The fruits now get completely mixed with the nuts, forming a somewhat of sticky mass, which must be kept aside. After mixing all the ingredients, add little cardamom and nutmeg powder to the whole mix, and make round laddus of desired size.

I enjoyed making them, an easy and not a very time consuming recipe. Go ahead and try them. One can incorporate any dry fruit as per taste to the recipe.

ashu 🙂