Rava kesari / ரவா கேசரி

Rava kesari is a popular and easy home made sweet in Tamilnadu. It is my all time favorite sweet. Though this recipe is very simple, many people will use different ratio of ingredients and the outcome texture will differ. This is one of the best ingredient ratio I learned over the time and all my friends appreciate me and ask for the ratio I use. So thought of posting this recipe today.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup – Rava
• 1 or 1 1/4 cup – Sugar
• 1 cup – Milk
• 2 cups – Water
• 1 no – cardamom
• 10 nos – Cashew nuts
• 6 or 7 – Raisin
• 1 or 2 pinch – Orange/yellow food color
• 1/4 cup – Ghee

Preparation method:

1. Heat 2 tbsp of ghee in a pan and fry the cashew nuts till golden brown and keep it aside. Now add raisins and fry it and keep it along with cashews.
2. In the same pan with leftover ghee roast rava over medium flame for 3 minutes or until it turns slightly golden brown. Make sure it doesn’t get burnt. When done, switch off and remove from the stove.
3. Take a hard bottomed pan add Milk, water and crushed cardamom seeds(normally I will remove cardamom skin and will crush seeds with little sugar) bring it to boil.Then add sugar and orange food color mix everything well; boil until sugar dissolves.
4. Add fried rava little by little to the boiling water and keep stirring continuously in order to avoid lumps. Let it cook for few minutes or until rava cooks. Now add remaining ghee and keep stirring until you get the desired consistency.
5. Switch off the stove and garnish with fried cashews and raisin.

Notes:

• To make nice slices, you can grease a plate with ghee and spread the kesari in it. After it cools down, cut into square or diamond shape with a knife. It looks beautiful and also helps to serve our guests neatly and easily.