Mahanandi

Deepavali Greetings to family, friends, fellow bloggers and readers of this blog.

Photo by Vijay Singari

For Deepavali, I preprared ‘Pala Kova’ (Doodh Peda), one of the classic sweets from home.

Recipe:

1 gallon of whole milk
1 1/2 cups of sugar
Cooking time : 3 hours

This is one of those recipes, which allows multitasking, at least for the first two hours. Also make it only when you have some good natured, dear friends or family nearby, so that they can give you moral support:) or help out, when you get frustrated with stirring and the slow way it takes for milk to thicken. Chit chat or clean up the kitchen, wash the dishes, cook up other recipes or fold the laundry and in between for every 2 to 3 minutes, stir the milk. This way you won’t notice the time.

Preparation:

In a big sturdy pan, bring the milk to a boil. Keep the heat on medium high and boil/simmer the milk for about 2 hours, stirring in between. By the end of two hours, the milk reduces in volume, becomes quite thick and turns from white to color of gandham(sandal wood) paste.

Add sugar to the thickened milk. Continuously stirring on medium heat, cook for about 30 to 45 minutes. By the end of this time, the milk-sugar paste further thickens and when you think, you can almost make a ball with it, then only switch off the heat.

Ladle off the paste onto a clean plate or round dish. Let it cool completely. Cut it into squares or shape into rounds. If you want, decorate the sweets with toasted pistachios or almonds.
I used an ice cream scooper to make round balls of pala kova.

Pala Kova (Doodh Peda) for Deepavali

Recipe Source: dear Vijay