Pearly Delight - Coconut Ladoo

Asima Bengali beauty is well know for the simple and delicious coconut ladoo. Whenever she made  those ladoo's either for Indian get together or for some pooja, all of us used to binge on it immediately. As it was moist, light, fresh and indeed delicious. Best thing is, it is cream and milk free. Basically low fat and juicy inside.

I come from coconut background, back in India my home is surrounded by mango, 5 coconut, guava, pomegranate and custard apple trees. Most likely we have some fruits or the other throughout the year. Every 2-3 months either of the coconut trees were harvested. My dad always made sure some fresh tender coconuts were served for the day, oh missing it. When I buy some kind of coconut from normal markets in Finland, I shed blood tears.

So, learning something from coconut was on the priority list, by which I could surprise mom when I go back to India. Asima was very happy to teach me, Shanthi too joined us, so obviously we have short girls evening, with good food and lots of ladoo. Thanks to PhD I have enormous patience, spent two hours to skin off the brown layer underneath the white part, wanted ladoo's to resemble pearl.

Ingredients


500 gram grated fresh coconut
280-300 gram sugar (depending upon coconut sweetness)
1/4 tsp of cardamon powder

Method
Mix all the above 3 ingredients well in a bowl. Warm a heavy bottom pan on medium heat, add the mixture into the pan and mix gently. Slowly the sugar will start to dissolve wait till the water from the sugar evaporates. Take care not to make it dry. Note they will/must be moist, as when sugar cools down they tend to crystallize. Totally the mixture was fried between 10 -12 minutes.  Cool down the mixture until bearable heat  to make balls. Make desired size ladoo and serve anytime!  I used sugar pearls for photoshoot if you are wondering what those little beads are? :)