Kadala Unda (Peanut balls with jaggery)

My all time favorite. During my Chennai days, we never had a day without one of this. But really I never knew that its so easy to prepare this. I thought that this required more experience and skill to roll out the hot balls. But this is very easy. Just need to be a bit careful.

Ingredients: 

Peanuts                        --   2 cups

Jaggery                        --   1 cup

Cardamom powder     --    1 tsp

Water                           --   ½ cup

Preparation of the balls:

Roast and shell the peanuts (if u have raw peanuts). You can either do it in a kadai or in a microwave. It would take around 8 minutes in a microwave at 600W power. Make sure to pause and stir the peanuts every two minutes. Else it would not be roasted uniformly. Keep it aside for 10 min and then shell them. This can be done by rolling them between your palms. This will also help to break them into two pieces.

You can also get roasted and shelled peanuts which makes this much easier.

In a pan, add water, jaggery and the cardamom powder. Let the jaggery melt and also thicken. The consistency of the jaggery is the most important thing. Add a drop to a bowl of water and it should immediately become a ball of required thickness, i.e. not too fluffy and not too hard. Once this reaches the required consistency, turn off the flame and add the peanuts into it and mix well. Let it cool for sometime, say 2 – 3 minutes. Make into balls when it is touchable. Dust the balls with rice flour ti avoid them sticking to each other.

Recipe Courtesy: Internet