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Happy Lohri everyone! Another year, another Indian harvest festival. Happy Sankranti, Uttarayan, Pongal and other variations as well. 🙂 And another delicious veganized Ladoo.
An Indian festival means a few more words about dairy. Because of the enormous demand for dairy in sweets, everyday food and increasing costs, the sweet shops in India these days use shampoo and oil concoctions and call it milk. Any dairy intense sweet bought during a festival, most likely highly polluted and carcinogenic.
Ghee(clarified butter) is an important element in a lot of Indian desserts and a lot of time people are surprised when I tell them it is not vegan. Ghee is made from butter, made from milk. Ghee is not Vegan. Nor is paneer, milk powder, malai, cheese and pretty much every Indian sweet. It takes about 28 lbs of milk to make just 1 lb ghee. Ghee is easily replaced by coconut oil or cocoa butter in most sweets.
In this Laddu, the fat is provided by the coconut flakes. You can add a bit more coconut oil for a softer, richer version. You can shape the dough into balls or press into a pan and cut up squares and call it a Burfi (bar).
For Glutenfree version, use brown rice flour. The burfi/balls wont be as crumbly as in the pictures, since brown rice flour has smaller granules than semolina, but it works out just fine.
For more Vegan Indian Dessert recipes see here. or here .
Step by step:
Roast the Semolina.
Add cashew and coconut oil mix well and roast for a minute.
Add coconut flour and roast for another minute.
Add sugar syrup. Mix into a lumpy mixture. Sorry, no picture of the lumpy mix. The dough is like a soft cookie dough.
Cool the lumpy dough and make balls or squares.
Burfi.
Laddoo
Coconut Rava Ladoo and Burfi - Coconut Semolina Cashew Sweet Balls. Vegan Recipe Glutenfree option
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup Semolina flour, or Brown rice flour for Glutenfree
- 1/2 cup Coconut flakes, dried
- 1 Tablespoon Coconut oil, optional. Omit to make Oilfree
- 2 Tablespoons chopped cashew pieces, optional. Omit to make nutfree
- a pinch of salt
Sugar Syrup
- 1/2 cup ground raw sugar, or use jaggery powder
- 3 Tablespoons water
- 1/8-1/4 teaspoon cardamom powder, depends on how much you love cardamom:
Instructions
- In a large pan, dry roast the semolina on medium-low heat for 6-8 minutes until the color changes and it gets fragrant.
- Using a blender/processor, blend the coconut flakes to make coarse coconut flour.
- Add the blended coconut, coconut oil, salt and cashew pieces to the pan. Mix well and roast for 2 minutes.
- (Coconut oil and cashew pieces can be left out to make nut free and oilfree)
- Meanwhile, in another pan, make the sugar syrup.
- Add all syrup ingredients and bring to a boil over medium heat. Continue to cook at medium low until one thread consistency- 230 to 235 degrees F / 110ºc.(a few minutes).
- Add the hot sugar syrup to the roasting dry ingredients and mix well to form a lumpy mixture. (Best results when both contents are hot)
- Take off heat. Cool for 2-3 minutes and form balls - Ladoo. Spray a little water if the mixture is too crumbly.
- Or Press immediately into parchment lined or greased baking pan to make Burfi. (I used an 8 by 4 inch pan.) The mixture gets too crumbly as it cools. So shape when still warm-hot. Handle carefully.
- Cut into squares when still warm. The bars will harden as they cool.
- Break into pieces when cool. Store in airtight container for upto a week.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
This Laddoo is being shared at Ricki’s wellness weekend, slightly indulgent Tuesdays,
Meat is easily associated with a direct death, but dairy always slips out from under the kill radar. I am often told about the almost none dairy consumption everyone does in everyday life. Maybe a half a cup of milk. What we don’t realize however, is the other forms in which we end up consuming a load of dairy..
Every tadka in ghee, every ghee filled sweet, every rich creamy paneer curry, every daal with makhan(butter/cream), every sandwich/pizza with cheese, every breakfast fried in butter, every buttercream layered cake, every tea/coffee with milk, and more.
Here is a video with mostly words about a life of a dairy cow. Please watch and share.
Richa! I’m in love with your blog, your recipes, and photos! I can’t wait to try out a couple of your recipes. Especially this one. 🙂 Mmm! Thank you for sharing your recipes with the world.
Thank you digiyesica! I love it that you like the blog and recipes:) Do let me know when you try any!
Hi Richa,
That’s a easy recipe. As a South Indian, I make a lot of dishes with coconut milk and rice. My most quick and easy sweet to make on a festive night would be rava ladoo or coconut burfi. I am loving your recipe. I will try this soon. Happy Sankaranti/Pongal to you!
Happy Sankranti to you too Vijitha. We hardly ever make anything other than besan ladoo. But i have grown to love coconut in the past few years. and they are so easy to put together and so crumbly without added fat!
so tempting and yummy looking laddoos
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Ladoo looks inviting and delicious,I love all kinda laddoos… yumm
I love ladoos too.. esp if someone else is making the balls 🙂
Those look amazing! I have been looking for a good burfi recipe.
Thanks Becky. This is an absolute fave at my house!
awesome and invitig ladoos….beautiful clicks dear…
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South Indian Cooking
Thank you Anu!
These are beautiful, and they sound so delicious! I’m going to try making them with rice flour tomorrow!
Thanks! Let me know how they turn out! There is only a mild difference in taste between semolina and brown rice flour. Usually the coconut and cardamom will take over:)
Any recommendations for someone that can’t have nuts? Would love to try this recipe.
You can leave the nuts out. In fact its easier to roll out the balls without the chopped nuts:) Coconut has enough nutty flavor by itself for this delicious ladoo
Another amazing sweet, Richa. These look perfect (Matt would want them dipped in chocolate or something, knowing him, which I’m sure is totally sacrilegious, but I love the look of them as-is!). And I am so with you on bars vs. balls. Sometimes presentation is everything, but if it’s just for me/me and Matt, I’ll do bars every time.
hehe. chocolate is not considered dessert back home but i would coat them in chocolate.. all that crumbly surprise inside once you bite into it.. yumm!
i think the reason we’re so obsessed with rolling desserts into balls is because of the cuteness factor. but, i completely agree with you- SO much easier to press it into a pan. and that way, it’s kinda like eating a brownie square!
i love that you are so easily able to make dairy filled indian treats vegan and that no one can tell the difference! i love how flaky these look, and how can you go wrong with adding coconut?!
I know right. :)) especially with the lower fat versions that i make i have to work quickly to form the ladoos. i much prefer the bars:) no standing in the kitchen required:) and they look pretty too if you cut them into small squares;)
there are a few cheese desserts that i am still working ont he textures.. lets see if we can veganize them this year!
Dear Vegan Richa: I’ve tried to make them this weekend, following your instructions to the letter. Unfortunately, the Ladoos came out hard as rocks. I did not even have time to shape them into balls, and had to go to plan B and make Burfi. The flavors were great, but the texture was way too hard … What did I do wrong? Was the simply syrup to hot? I would really appreciate your input on this. Thank you.
I think the sugar syrup got over cooked. As soon as the sugar syrup is half thread (short 1 thread that breaks) consistency you should be ready to add in the ingredients, becaue within a minute the syrup will become 1 thread consistency. You can also add another Tablespoon of coconut oil, so in case the syrup does get too thick, the oil will help keep the laddoos softer.
Thank you so much for your response. I will try again.