Kids Peanut Balls

Tomorrow is Karthigai Deepam(Tamil Festival of Lamps) where diyas lit in the streets and walls will be brighter than the full moon and countless stars in the sky 😉 Kids will be keen in bursting the leftover Diwali crackers to add extra colors to the evening.. Waiting for a visual treat !!

Peanut chikki/balls are traditional snack made for Karthigai Deepam. But the usual one will be harder for the kids to munch on. My kid grabbed one happily but as she couldn’t bite it, she started licking it and it took an hour for me to grab the jaggery-sucked ball back from her! To avoid the threat of teeth cavity, I ground the peanuts and made this kids special peanut balls. This will be lil crunchier than peanut laddoo, but softer than kadalai urundai. She loved this and finished off in seconds 😉

I clicked the below pic of freshly plucked groundnut with its plants in the background, when we visited my hubby’s native last week. His uncle, Mr.Thangaraj Ramasamy is an enthusiastic farmer who inspired me much in organic farming. We enjoy the privilege of his organic harvests ! I always insist my readers to grow simple and easy organic greens and veggies at home .. Click this link of my menu page to get an idea about home organic garden.

Preparation

1. If your peanuts are not roasted, roast it in a pan until the skin has black spots on it. You will hear continuous popping sound. Make sure not to burn it.2. Transfer to a plate and let it cool down. Now, take few peanuts between your palms and rub roughly to and fro few times. Then place the upper palm sideways to make a plus sign and start twisting so that the skins completely peel off the nuts. Blow off the skin and collect the nuts.3. Keep the ingredients ready. Grind peanuts in mixie. Just 2 to 3 pulses would suffice. Make sure it is dry and you do not grind much to let the oil come out!4. In a pan, add water , grated jaggery and a generous pinch of cardamom powder and let it boil until jaggery is dissolved.5. Filter jaggery water, wash the pan(or use another one) and pour jaggery water into the pan. Let it boil till it thickens.6. In a bowl of water, drop a drop of jaggery syrup. It should not disperse/dissolve in water. You should be able to take it easily out of water as a thick ball-like syrup. If this consistency is reached, switch off the stove and put ground peanut into jaggery.7. Mix it with ladle. Grease your hand with ghee and when the mix is still warm, start shaping laddoos.Let the laddoos cool down. Store in air-tight container and offer whenever your kid demands 🙂

Tips/Tricks

• Jaggery syrup consistency decides the snack variety. When you switch off the stove just when the syrup does not disperse much(no soft ball consistency required) in water, then it is called peanut laddoo. When you switch off when the syrup is too thick , stands firm in water & able to roll it into soft balls, then you make chewy peanut balls as in this post. When you switch off when the syrup still thickens to hard ball consistency(the ball when thrown in a vessel makes dong sound) , then you make crunchy balls. Switch off whenever you wish 🙂
• As the peanuts are ground, the heat will be dispersed throughout the mix and so making balls will not be so hot like usual kadalai urundai(which uses halved peanut that sustains the heat in each nut).
• This peanut ball slightly hardens(not so hard) over time.