Ladoo or Coconut Sweetmeats

Making and sorting ladoo is hard, hard work - 

We learnt to make ladoo, a North Indian sweet-meat when in Saudi Arabia, thanks to our friend, Priya. We found ladoo to be extremely quick and easy to make and they proved to be a firm favourite with tall Afrikaans males and compact Jordanian boys named Osama (which means "lion" in Arabic). As our children were born, however, they too became enamoured of them, though we have reduced the recipe to its primary ingredients of coconut and condensed milk.  

In the interests of authenticity, I will present the recipe in full.

LadoosRecipe

2 Tbs Ghee (or clarified butter, butter can substitute)
2-3 Cardamom seeds (I really like the taste so use more, my kids don't so then I leave it out)
1 tin condensed milk - the biggish ones you usually use, not the piddly ones.
500 grams (one - two bags) of desiccated coconut

(As an aside, did you know that desiccated is one of the twenty most difficult, common words to spell in the English language? Since we say: deSSiCate, but spell it deSiCCate. From the Latin, of course.)

Melt ghee (or butter if you don't have the clarified variety) in a pan with crushed-up cardamom seeds (use a rolling pin for this task, and yes, they do tend to jump around a bit. Fem is more patient with the entire process than I. It can be quite fun though to track down the seeds and then bash them really hard with the rolling pin. Well, that's how the 9 year old boys approach the task anyway, with great verve and vigour. Try to ensure seeds are on bread board at the time of crushing them.) 

Place cardamom, plus husks, into the hot pan - they're good for cleansing the teeth. When you encounter any stray bits of husk within your sweetmeat, you can either spit it out or, as the Indians do, chew it well first. Roast entire bag of desiccated coconut in the pan, until evenly browned (at about 3 to 4 on the ring). Stir often. You can roast the coconut very dark or lighter, we find about medium brown is best and tastiest. You do have to keep quite a careful watch on it since it blackens fast, and you need to stir it continuously in the pan.

You need to keep a careful eye on the desiccated coconut when toasting it in the pan

When toasted to taste, add condensed milk to the hot coconut, gauging how best to saturate the mixture, without making it too sticky. 

Add the condensed milk to the roasted desiccated coconut

You may find you have left-over condensed milk. (Your choice as to what you do with it). Take pan off the heat. If you are particularly sweet-toothed you can add sugar now to the glutinous mess and let it dissolve, but we find it becomes way too sickly sweet then for our taste. 

Let it cool for a short while, but, whilst still fairly hot, roll "dough" up into balls, then press down in the centre, generating a round sweetmeat of about 2cm in diametre and close to 1cm high (you can make them bigger or smaller but this size is optimised for popping into the mouth). 

Your hands will be covered in oil once you have finished rolling out the balls

You can colour them with food colouring: 

Bethany added pink colouring to the ladoos for the girls in her class, the boys got yellow

Or, you can (traditional) place an almond or other nut or big raisin in the middle of each. We found almonds work the best, except now my kids don't like the almonds either. Leave to cool on grease-proof paper. They refrigerate well and keep for days in a plastic container. 

Bethany with the ladoos she made for school as a treat

Bonus Extra: Giant Snot Balls

Ladoo can be used to make wonderfully gross giant snot balls for Pirate's Day or a Halloween party. All you need to do is add loads of green colouring, and then swirl in a bit of dark purple and even red into it - keeping it looking spotty and then roll into - well, you know what kind of shape you are looking to make. The result was sufficiently impressively gross that large numbers of children refused to taste them even. Here's Faran with the results:

Ladoos as giant snot balls for Pirate's Day