Here kicks off another week! Weekdays often remind me of the skipped meals to our infrequent food consumption throughout the day. Either caught up in busy meetings or wrapping up cascade communications over emails and phone calls, eating right takes a back seat! Your mind would let you grab innumerable cups of tea, coffee or sometimes even a shot of alcohol too. But, does that help? I am sure you know the answer. It’s a ‘NO’ !
Amidst the hola-pola of busy schedules, what can we do to keep up our energy levels and take care of our health? Isn’t handy to have something in your bag to endure quick hunger pangs during the busy week days?! No, do not get the idea of chocolates or the touted energy bars. How about some homemade fudge balls aka laddus made out of almonds and flax seeds. The health conscious folk might already have an idea about this powerful nut and seed. For the lesser known people, almonds are the best source of the good fats essential to our body along with Vitamin E, fiber and folic acid. Flaxseeds on the other hand are good sources of omega-3-fatty acids and antioxidants.
This Diwali I got bored with the Burelu (fried sweet lentil stuffed dumplings) and Bobbatlu (Sweetened lentil stuffed Indian bread) sweet routine at home and decided on making laddus using dry fruits and flax seeds in particular. I experimented with the proportions and it worked out. Such a relief to get something right at the first attempt! I was contemplating on what kind of binding agent should be used in the flaxseed laddu and this post cleared my confusion in picking up roasted gram dal flour over instant oats. Rolling onto the recipes –
Badam Laddu| Almond Fudge Balls:
Ingredients:
½ cup dry roasted Almonds
1 tbsp dry roasted Cashew
¼ cup Jaggery ( Bellam/gud)
1 tbsp Raisins (kismis)
2 pods Cardamom
Procedure:
- Roast the almonds and cashew on medium to low heat till they get crunchy.
- Grate the jaggery or chop it into smaller chunks to ease the process of grinding.
- Remove the husk of the cardamom pod.
- Once the roasted nuts cool down, take all the ingredients into the mixer-jar and run it on pulse mode till you get it together.
- If you don’t have pulse option in your grinder, run the mixture in intervals lasting only few seconds. Else, the mixture would turn into a nut butter. The oil released from the nuts would be optimum when pulsed at short bursts, helps getting the laddus in shape.
- Roll the mixture into balls between your palms. Delicious almond laddus are ready! Roll them in shredded coconut for mix of flavours or fine chopped almonds for the crunch.
Almond laddus- didn’t need a drop of ghee! Natural almond oil was enough to roll the magic.
Flaxseed Laddu| Flaxseed and Gram flour Fudge Balls
Ingredients:
½ cup Roasted Chana Dal (veyinchina sengapappu/chutney senagapappu/bengal gram dal)
¼ cup Roasted Flax seeds
¼ cup Jaggery ( Bellam/gud)
2 pods Cardamom Seeds
3tbsp Ghee
Procedure:
- Roast chana dal and flax seeds on slow flame till you get the roasted fragrance and slight change in colour.
- Grate the jaggery.
- Take the roasted chana dal and flax seeds at room temperature and powder them using the grinder.
- Add cardamom seeds, jaggery and ghee to the jar and give it a pulse.
- Roll the mixture into laddus between your palms. Unlike most of the laddus, you don’t need the extra splash of ghee on your palms to roll them. Add a bit of ghee only when the mixture doesn’t bind well into a round shape.
And that’s it! SEE how simple these are to make! Make new batches every Sunday and stash them in the fridge to keep them fresh. It’s a crowd-pleaser – from children to adults.
Note: Diabetics and people who are recommended to avoid sugar and jaggery for medical reasons, please avoid this sweet. Plain nuts or powdered almond meal or flaxseed meal can be mixed with your rotis (Indian flat bread) or you could make chutney powder or add them in dips.
tadka tales 