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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.
thank you so much for this recipe. I am a freelance personal chef and needed to Veganize Rava Ladoo for a client. I will be testing this recipe out on the weekend and will let you know how it is received.
Now that I’m finished ranting….I just saw a recipe for the Burfi in a vegan magazine! I was wondering what they were and where the origin of the dish was. Now I know! They look absolutely delightful! Oh and I need to apologize for not reading lately, I was crazy with my challenge and not doing any reading, then my laptop died! I’ve got a desktop, but can’t use it when the kids are up and about (which is nearly always) sigh.
no apologies needed. i would be super mad if my machine died.
Burfi can be Anything. it is small sweet bars of different ingredients.. cheese, nuts, coconut or other things.
Why does it bother you? Maybe if you could answer that honestly for yourself, it would be a step in the the right direction. After all, in the absence of a totalitarian state, multiplicity of belief and action has been the human way of coexistence. Of course I am fully with you in expressing YOUR beliefs, as a means to INFORM.
sumati. Sure everyone is entitled to their beliefs. Say for example the delhi rape. There are some who are bothered by it, some who arent. There are people who believe that the blame lies on the victim herself. Everything so wrong about that heinous crime. I am very bothered by the act itself. but I am also very bothered by the apathy shown by other people by not helping, the apathy and inaction of the police in taking her to the hospital and later the slow moving of the arrest and so on. The apathy of the politicians and others who come out and blab and again blame the victim.. All of this stems from Their Beliefs..and all of that equally bothers me.
I will be bothered and extremely uncomfortable being around people with such beliefs too.
What bothers me about people eating dairy is that I believe most of them are woefully uninformed (like me, just over a year ago) They have no idea how harmful the dairy industry is to the earth, to the animals and to themselves. I didn’t ever consider that cheese had cholesterol and could give me a heart attack, or that the casein is a huge CANCER trigger, or that dairy may have been part of the reason I couldn’t cope with my autoimmune disease (now in remission). I THOUGHT it was good for me. Now that my “brain bulb” is turned on too, I’m horrified by the amount of dairy that is consumed around me. It doesn’t do any good to anyone involved. If people really knew the dark side of dairy, I think many would stop consuming it. Thanks for continuing to educate Richa. If we keep educating instead of pointing fingers, we’re bound to have more people hop on our train 🙂
I dint know most of it 2 years back too. I happened upon some vegan food blogs and then just kept reading and reading all the articles. and then decided it was time to take it off the menu.
These sound delicious! The life of a dairy cow and her offspring makes me so sad. I don’t think many people realize the intrinsic pain and suffering in the dairy industry. It’s painted with idyllic brushes. It fools many. I’m glad there are loads of plant based options, so that people can enjoy old favorites, and no one has to suffer for them.
I know.. lately i have been getting bothered being around people gobbling down loads of butter cheese and stuff. how can they not see. well hopefully some will.. till then I can all enjoy the stuff my mom used to make, without the dairy!
What a beautiful easy dessert Richa, I love how you strive to educate all through your blogs and show how simple changes can be made without sacrificing taste and texture.
Blogger does not like you.. i found all your comments in spam:) I know right.. i keep trying to make vegan versions in indian stuff. usually the subs are super easy:)
Would love to know some jaggery vegan sweets (I do one with rice, coconut and jaggery) but almost all of them are “wet” – would love to have a dry jaggery sweet recipe.
jaggery in the syrup will work here too. the burfi will harden when it cools. it might be a bit more chewy that regular sugar syrup.
wow…yummyyyy laddus … mouthwatering cliks!!
I am so glad you time to comment about the dairy issue, especially in Idian foods- I deal with people misunderstanding this so much!
These looks amazing! So cute 🙂
Thanks Gabby. Every few days i get incredulous epressions when i tell people that ghee is not vegan:) and it is one of the easiest things to change up in most dishes!:))