Varagu Laddoo

Every New Year begins with a fresh mind yearning for happiness throughout the year. Happiness motivates to work smart. Smart work brings success. Success invites more happiness. To possess a happy life, all we need is healthy mind and body.

Exercise daily, eat nutritious diet, spend quality time with family, set a work-life balance. Wish you all a happy and healthy New Year.

Sweet is preferred for a new beginning. An easy and tasty laddoo using Kodo Millet(Varagu) would be a healthy choice to mark the occasion. This laddoo is my personal favorite. It tastes similar to(actually tastier than) Rava Laddoo but replacing sugar with jaggery and rava with healthy millet. No compromise in taste !! I assure 🙂

Preparation

1.Fry kodo millet flour in a dry pan until nice aroma comes. Grind fried chana dal to fine powder in mixie.2.In a hot kadai, pour 4 tbsp ghee and once melted, add broken cashews. Do not wait for cashews to change color. Once ghee bubbles up, just switch off the stove.3.Add water to jaggery and start heating. Add a generous pinch of cardamom powder. Let it bubble up well.4.In a mixing bowl, add millet flour , fried chana dal and keep it ready. Once jaggery starts to thicken, add a drop to a bowl of water. If the drop doesn’t disintegrate and stands firm(No ball consistency required), just switch off the stove and immediately pour it to the flour mix through a filter.5.Pour ghee & fried cashews(this will still be hot as jaggery syrup don’t take much time). Mix well with ladle.6.Grease your hand with ghee, give a quick mix with your hand and start shaping laddoos.    Once cooled, store it in air-tight container. Yummy and healthy laddoos are ready in a jiffy!

Tips/Tricks

• Jaggery syrup consistency determines the taste of the laddoo. If the syrup is too thick, the laddoo will be chewy. If its too lighter, the laddoo will taste like maavilakku. If its perfect, the laddoo will be delicious!
• If you are new in making jaggery syrups, better filter it once it bubbles up and then wash the pan and again pour the jaggery water to make syrup. This caution is because if you miss the right stage and if you cross the correct consistency, the syrup will not be pourable to filter the impurities.
• You shall omit frying the flour if you already have fried flour at hand.
• You shall use store-bought kodo millet(varagu) flour. I used homemade one. It is same as making foxtail millet(thinai) flour. Click here to see the steps of making millet flour.
• This laddoo hardens over time. But it never lasted more than 2 days at my home as this is my family’s favorite!