It's festival season and what's a festival without homemade sweets. Different sweets are made for festivals but I chose to make Nariyal Barfi or coconut fudge for this Ganesh Chaturthi. Coconut Barfi is an Indian sweet, made from just three ingredients. It's simple to make, super delicious and has a melt-in-your-mouth texture. A perfect sweet for any Indian festival. It's festive, it's traditional and every Indian family's favorite. You want a rich taste, add full cream or milk powder. You want to add flavours, use cardamom Powder or saffron or any of your favorite essence. It is that simple.
Here's how this is made.
Ingredients:
Milk - 1 Cup or 237 ml
Sugar - 200 grams
Freshly Grated Coconut - 3 Cups. ( You could substitute this with dessicated coconut too).
Cardamom Powder - 1 teaspoon
Clarified Butter or Ghee - 2 tablespoon
Chopped Nuts - 2 tablespoons (optional)
Saffron Strands - 1/2 teaspoon (to be soaked in 2-3 tablespoons of lukewarm milk) or yellow or pink food colour.
Edible Silver foil - 2 no's (optional).
Method:
Begin with greasing a square pan or cake tin with clarified Butter/Ghee and line it with a parchment paper. We will be using this to set our coconut barfi. Greasing your tin with clarified Butter makes it easy to remove the barfi without sticking, tearing or breaking.
Take a thick bottom pan and add milk and half of the sugar (100 grams) and bring it to boil. Make sure to continuously stir and keep the flame on medium low.
In a separate thick bottom pan, add the freshly grated coconut and roast on low flame for couple of minutes.
Now add the remaining sugar to the coconut mixture and combine well.
To this coconut and sugar mixture, add the boiled milk in batches ensuring the mixture is being continuously stirred and the flame is on medium low.
Keep stirring the mixture for about 5-6 minutes or until the milk evaporates. It takes roughly about 6-8 minutes or may be a little more.
Once you find that the mixture has become thick and has started to leave the sides of the pan, add two tablespoons of ghee and combine.
Now switch off the flame and divide the mixture into two equal parts.
Take one part of the mixture and place it on the greased pan and even it out. You could use a rubber spatula to gently spread the mixture evenly. Make it like a slab.
Now to the other part of the mixture, either add the saffron milk that you would have kept aside or few drops of lemon yellow color to turn it into a yellow color mixture.
Layer this yellow coconut mixture on top of the plain coconut slab.
Now, with the help of the spatula, evenly press the mixture.
Now your two layer coconut Barfi is done.
If you are using the silver foil to decorate your barfi, then this is the time to gently wipe the silver foil (vark) on your coconut barfi.
Place this pan in the refrigerator for a couple of hours before you can cut them in your desired shape.
Once the coconut Barfi is set, now cut them in your desired shapes. Some try to cut them diagonally, giving it a diamond shape, but I simply cut them in squares.
In case you are not using the edible silver foil, then you could use chopped nuts too garnish and decorate your barfi. I chose the silver foil.
Voila! Super easy and very tasty coconut barfi is ready. Enjoy it with your friends and family.
Happy festival season you all!! May this bring lots of happiness in our lives.