Mande

Come Diwali and all ladies get busy with cleaning of house and planning of Diwali snacks or Faral as it’s called in Marathi.

        My Aayi, who makes excellent sweets taught me this recipe, which initially looks tricky to make, but is yummy and different.

        It’s called Mande. It’s basically a puri made from maida covered with fine mixture of grated and roasted coconut, sugar and sesame seeds.

       

Ingredients

For the puri:

¼ kg Maida

2 tablespoon melted ghee

Salt to taste

Water or milk to make dough

For stuffing:

1 whole dry coconut or copra

Powder sugar according to your taste

2 tablespoon roasted til (sesame seeds)

2 teaspoon elachi powder

Oil for frying

Firstly prepare the stuffing:

1.    Finely grate the dry coconut.

2.    Dry roast it on low heat.

3.    Once cooled add sugar, roasted til and elachi powder and keep aside.

For Puri:

1.    Make dough from the ingredients of puri. Heat the ghee before adding to the dough.

2.    The dough shouldn’t be very soft or very hard. It should be normal dough like chapatti dough.

3.    Keep it aside,covered to rest for 15-20 mins.

How to assemble:

1.    Divide the dough into 20 equal balls.

2.    Roll out puris from the dough and remember to prick it with fork, as we don’t want these to puff while frying.

3.    After you have rolled out all the puris, heat the oil.

4.   Till oil get heated up, in a plate spread little bit of coconut sugar mixture.

5.    Once the oil gets hot, lower the flame and fry the 1^st puri.

6.   When the puri is fried on both sides, drain the excess oil and place it on the plate with the coconut mixture.

7.    Sprinkle some of the mixture on the puri and fold it into half.

8.   Again sprinkle some more mixture and fold into quarter.

9.This folding and sprinkling of coconut mixture has to be done immediately after frying when the puris are soft.

10. Once it gets cool, it becomes hard and crisp.

11.  Repeat this process for rest of the puris.

12. Allow it to cool and store into airtight container.

Note : 

You can add milk while making dough, but then it does stay fresh for long duration. But if water is added to dough it can stay for 10 - 15 days.

I have written and submitted this recipe for KitchenAid® India: Diwali Recipe Contest and Giveaway