My son loves kaju puri’s available in most of the Gujarati food stores across Mumbai but guess its easy enough to love these…they are sinfully tasty and loaded with kaju and sugar. I have been trying to find ways of getting him to instead have his dose of other dry fruits like walnuts, hazelnuts, unsalted pista and almonds but just could not figure out how to include these in our daily meals in a friendly way. So I decided to make a dry fruit powder at home which can be included in the various food items daily.
Dry fruit powder additions can be made to:
1. Thepla or paratha: extremely nutritious version with wheat, sesame seeds and a few spoonfuls of the dry fruit powder.
2. Oats or porridge served with fruits (banana, strawberry, mango, chickoo) and sprinkled with a bit of the dry fruit powder
3. Milkshakes and smoothies: or even in regular servings of milk
4. Dry fruit puri or cookies ( no sugar and gluten free. recipe below)
The dry fruit powder recipe is as follows:
Almond / Badam 250 gms
Cashew nuts (unsalted) 250 gms
Pistachios (unsalted) 100 gms
Nutmeg 100 gms (optional)
Raisins or dry dates 1 cup (optional if you want unsweetened. Raisins make it sweeter with higher natural sugar so substitute with dry dates if you prefer less sweet or are making it for a diabetic)
Walnut or hazelnut 1 cup
Saffron strands 15 for color
Elaichi / Cardamom as per taste
Roast all nuts in pan or microwave. They should be crunchy to eat once they cool down to room temperature. Put all the nuts, saffron strands and cardamom in a blender and grind to a fine powder. Mix well and store in an airtight container.
The amount of nuts can be as per your preference but do note that walnut does leave oil so higher quantity will make the powder a bit greasy and difficult to store for long term use.
Dry fruit puri or cookie recipe:
If you wish to stick to the usual kaju or badam puri’s then the tarla dalal recipe here is for you. (http://www.tarladalal.com/kaju-puri-2427r). They are simply yummy.
Else for a healthier and equally yummy option, see the variation below.
3 cups dry fruit powder mix
1/2 cup powdered flax seeds or sunflower seeds
3/4 cup milk (add kesar if not added to the mix earlier. If adding kesar to milk then do leave for at least 30/45 mins)
1/2 cup dry dates mix if the dry fruit powder is unsweetened.
Sieve and mix the dry fruit powder and flax/sunflower seeds. Add milk spoon by spoon kneading into a dough. Take as little milk as possible and the dough should not be too soft. If it seems difficult to get the dough together (happens if we have added to many different nuts together) then optional to add 2/4 spoons of roasted rawa as required to knead the dough together.
On a flat surface lay a butter paper, take a larger portion of the dough in a ball and place it on the butter paper. Grease your hands with a few drops of oil to smoothen the ball. Cover this with another layer of the butter paper and then roll with a rolling pin. The thickness can be as per your preference. Remove the upper layer butter paper and cut in your desired shape.
If you wish to involve your kids then give them various shapes of cookie cutters (animal, alphabets, numbers etc) and get them to cut out the cookies to place in a tray.
You can microwave this or if required then just plain grill them both sides on a tawa. You may see some oil ooze depending on the quantity of walnuts but the recipe by itself does not add any oils.
Let the cookies cool to room temperature before you store in a air tight container.
These puris or cookies make very healthy mid meal options or lunch box additions.
Cheers and healthy eating for our little ones.
quirkymums 