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Every few weeks I try to vegan-ize Indian sweets and desserts and other dairy intense recipes which do not have a straight forward substitute or a close alternative. This past week, I had an idea about a certain texture and taste and decided to make Pedas.
Pedas / Mathura Phedas are flat discs that are soft, have a good lot of sugar and some flavorings like cardamom, saffron, rose, pistachio etc and the other(or the only) main ingredient is Khoa (milk solids). I don’t know why so many Indian sweets use milk solids. Imagine the amount of cow’s milk needed to make the solids by cooking the milk till most of the moisture evaporates ( 5 cups or 1.2 liter or 33 oz or 2.2 lbs of whole milk, gives just 200 gms or 0.4 lbs of Khoa, which is almost 6:1 ratio). And now imagine all the milk being taken away from the babies somewhere, who are very hungry and eventually are killed, just so we can eat a few of these sweets. Now, we don’t need to anymore. These pedas might not be exactly like how you remember but they are close, very close and very delicious!
Pedas are a very sugary milk fudge kind of dessert. so the vegan version is also sweet and fudgy. Adjust sweet in the recipe to preference.
Believe you me. you want to make these pedas to celebrate Lohri and Sankranti.
Next in line maybe Kalakand!
Also to celebrate 20,000 fans on Facebook, I am giving away 5 copies of the Ebook today! The first 5 comments on this post get the Ebook! Please leave me a way to contact you in the comments 🙂
Steps:
Soak the saffron in warm almond milk.
Grind the almonds. Add to bowl. Add coconut flour, sugar, cardamom, salt and mix well.
Add almond milk, maple syrup and mix into a soft dough. Shape into discs and bake for 10 minutes.
Serve when cool.
Kesar Peda - Saffron Infused Almond Cookie
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup almond flour, Both blanched as well as natural flour work.
- 1.5 Tbsp coconut flour
- 3 Tbsp finely ground raw sugar , or other fine vegan sugar
- a generous pinch of salt
- 1/4 tsp cardamon powder
- 8 saffron strands
- 1 tsp almond milk , or other non dairy milk
- 1.5 Tbsp maple syrup, or any other sweet syrup with similar consistency like agave, jaggery syrup. sugar syrup
Instructions
- Heat the almond milk. Mix the saffron strands in it and let sit for 5 minutes.
- In a bowl, mix the almond flour, coconut flour, sugar, salt and cardamom powder.
- Add the saffron almond milk and maple syrup (or jaggery/sugar/date syrup) and mix well to make a soft dough. If the mixture is not a soft sticky mix, add in 1 teaspoons or more maple syrup. Make flat discs of the dough and serve as is, or bake at 300 degrees F / 150ºc for 9 minutes. (the pedas will expand a bit while baking). Top with some chopped pistachios or almond slivers and press in
- Cool completely before serving or storing. Store in the refrigerator in airtight container for upto a week. the baked pedas are are soft Fudgy cookies. They taste best chilled.
Notes
To grind the almonds into as fine as possible, add a Tablespoon of oats and a Tablespoon of starch(corn or arrowroot) in the blender and blend. Blanched almond flour works best Nutritional values based on one serving
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Other Sankranti/Lohri recipes
Coconut Rava Laddoo – Sweet balls of coconut flakes and semolina.
This Eggplant and potato stir fry with chickpea flour, spices and nuts. Ringad Batak nu shaak
This puffed grain and jaggery snack. A laddoo ball or bars with puffed grains, sesame seeds, nuts kept together with Jaggery(unrefined sugar) syrup is a favorite sweet and snack in several parts of India. One of the versions has only sesame seeds and jaggery syrup like a chewy sesame brittle. This Tilgud (sesame jaggery) is distributed among friends and family with the saying “Tilgul ghya, god god bola” that means “Take a tilgul and talk sweet as it”. The under-lying thought in the exchange of tilguds is to forget the past ill-feelings and hostilities and resolve to speak sweetly and remain friends.
Kanda Bhaji – Onion Fritters. or make these Baked broocoli fritters.
Date fig Burfi – Date fig nut bars
Upma- Savory Cream of wheat or rice cooked with peas, nuts and veggies
Besan Quinoa Laddoo – Sweet Chickpea flour balls with cashews and raisins.
Happy Sankranti / Lohri / Pongal to all who are celebrating!
This Peda is being shared at Allergy Free Wednesdays and Ricki’s wellness weekend.
Hi Richa,
Recently I served these pedhas for Hanuman Jayanti. They were delicious without any time consuming work of boiling milk. I was craving for vegan pedhas since I started following vegan diet. I was skeptical if this would have lot of almond taste, however it completely mimicked khoya taste.
Both me and my husband loved it. We definitely prefer baked version. For unbaked, my mom suggested me to dry roast flour before kneading the dough. I may try that. I skipped coconut flour.
Thank you for wonderful, cruelty free recipe 🙂
Regards,
Mukta.
exactly right. it works perfectly after baking. the heat helps infuse the flavors and sugar.. I like the idea of pre-roasting the flour. let me know how it turns out.
i am so glad you liked it. i need to make these again:)
Hello Richa,
I recently tried this wonderful recipe and served as a prasad for Hanuman Jayanti. I was missing eating pedhas since I started following vegan diet.
Both, my husband and I loved it. Initially I was skeptical if it will have too much almod taste, but I was wrong. It totally mimicked khoya taste. I skipped coconut flour. I tried both baked and unbaked. I could feel the taste of raw flour in unbaked version and thus prefer baked version. My mom suggested to dry roast flours for unbaked version, may try it next time.
Thank you very much,
Mukta
Is there any substitute for coconut flour? Buying whole bag for 1 tbsp for peda is bit expensive 🙁
oat or almond flour
Can you freeze these after baking ?
haven’t tried – but should work fine
Should sugar syrup be of 1 thread consistency?
yes anywhere from 0.5 to 1 thread consistency will work.
I cut the sugar in half and served these for breakfast this morning. Delicious!
Awesome! The Indian sweet Peda is very sweet, so it needs the sugar, but as a cookie, the sweet can definitely be cut down. I am so glad you made them! andthnk you so much for trying so many of my recipes! xx <3
i’ve been looking for cookies made with almond flour. this sounds great!
hooray for another gf indian treat! these sound superb and look delicious.
Oh darn, I missed out on the giveaway! At least I have these delicious cookies as a consolation prize… The flavors sound incredible, exotic and delicate, and like nothing else I’ve ever tasted. You are such a kitchen genius!
These are gorgeous Richa! Love the addition of saffron- beautiful colour 🙂
OMG~ I’ve found cooking Nirvana!!! I LOVE Indian cooking~ Richa is a gourmet, smart, eco and health conscious AND has delicious recipes what more incentive can a person want to take the leap to appreciating a new cuisine and all it has to offer—THANk YOU. THIS is amazing. NAMASTE!
Very weird my ID didn’t come out accurately…Obiwan is the name of my little dog, and of course, I’m “his Mom” ~so-o-o that’s why I choose the name: Obiwan’s Mom :o) My email address is sharon.conser@gmail.com
Loving Greetings~ I loved your blog so much, I looked up major South Asia Holiday to find out more. I can’t wait to make your Pedas and learn more about India and it’s culture and cuisine. May your life be blessed with love. May your life be blessed with lakshmi. May your life be blessed with happiness. HAPPY MAKAR SANKRANTI!