Kaju Katli or Kaju Barfi

When I was small I knew this as just barfi and it was my favourite sweet from the mithai shop, I wasn’t introduced to Bengali sweets then. I used to be very fascinated with the chandi warq on top and would try to pry it out and taste it on its own. It was after many years I learned how it was actually made in an episode of Surabhi.

From my hubby I hear that in Lucknow there is a place called Chowk where you can almost always hear the thak-thak sound as people beat small pellets of silver between leather sheets till they become thin sheets of silver. These sheets are of merely a fraction of a millimetre in thickness. I picked up some from a shop in Lucknow about a year back. But a few days back I also saw it on the shelves of one super market in Bangalore. It is truly a nice time for people who love cooking what with all kinds of ingredients being so freely available.

Now back to my kaju katli recipe, since this was the first time I tried it is far from perfect and this recipe I am recording here is for how I would go about it the next time round. This post has been sitting in my drafts for sometime now...and in the meanwhile I have found another totally different version of this recipe which doesn’t use khoya at all...will try that too soon and update this post....

Ingredients

200 grams khoya,

1 ½ cup cashew nuts,

160 grams sugar,

½ powdered green cardamom seeds,

Few sheets of silver warq

Method

Dry grind the cashews to a fine powder. Grate the khoya or just crumble them with your fingers. Mix the khoya and the sugar in a non stick pan. Cook it on a low heat stirring continuously till the sugar melts. Do not over bhuno it.

Now fold in the powdered cashews and heat it thoroughly till the mixture comes together. Add in the powdered green cardamom seeds and make a lump of the entire mixture. Cool this a bit.

Place the lump on a clean plastic sheet and place another plastic sheet on top and roll to get a uniform layer of about half a centimetre. Decorate it with chandi warq and cut into diamond shapes.