Clean & Deliciously tackling the festival calories, with Skinny Laddus.
Holi is right around the corner. And I am determined to show
you a way to enjoy this festival of colours in the cleanest and purest form
ever. By no means am I going to tell you to not play colours with your near and
dear ones. But why not colour this season yellow with turmeric powder. For a geela surprise, stain your friend a deep
crimson with fresh beetroot grated. I can go on and on about these clean
procedures, but it's food that’s on my mind, and it food I want to write about.
Festivals in India are deliciously decadent. Every corner of
this big country has a delicacy especially made for Holi. Neighbours take
packets of mithai and visit your
apartment. You too have to return the favour. But how about if you can add a
healthy twist to this favour? What if you tell people, especially the ones who
are struggling with weight issues that they can have this laddu without worrying about calories? Won’t there be a perfect
smile on their face, a big thank you to your soul? Just to take that
pleasureful thought in, I devised this healthy, yet decadent homemade sweet,
that I lovingly named Skinny Nutty
Laddus. It’s the technique that is important, and not substitution of
ingredients. As I told you earlier, I am not a big fan of counting calories,
but a bigger fan of devising such techniques that eliminate calories with
ingenious processes. These laddus are made of real ghee/butter, nuts, sugar and
condensed milk. It’s made of pure substances, yet you would see how I take out
calories off the final product by following simple steps. I am doing all this
to just make you understand that going sugar free doesn’t mean to start using chemicalized
sweeteners. Ghee and butter are not your enemies. But if you can follow
moderation, then enjoy these pleasureful decadence. After all we live just 1 life.
Before I get in with the recipe, let me jot down a few
pointers about 3 basic ingredients I have used in this recipe. This would allow
you to understand this revolutionary recipe, a bit better. :-P
- First on the list had to be besan or chickpea flour. This is a flour made out of
garbanzo/chickpea which is notoriously lumpy in nature. It is actually a good
source of plant based protein, and contains a fair amount of minerals and
fibres. The sifting process does eliminate some fibres off the recipe, but hey-
this is still much healthier than a piece of cake, frosted or not. Now this
flour has a tendency of soaking in a lot of liquid. Like the ghee it soaked up
in the video below. But if you can cook it to the right temperature and provide
another source of liquid in that temperature, it would render out that ghee
that it soaked earlier. So now you know, it is one of the best flours to use in
a skinny recipe like this. And after the condensed milk was added, it rendered
out a considerable amount of fat off itself.
- Nut butters are the second most important
ingredient. It’s the good fat in the nut which emulsifies with the fibres and
create nut butter. Mostly, you can make walnut and cashewnut butters without
adding any additional fat as these nuts are full of essential oils. In the
recipe I have used half of walnut and other half of peanut butter. Walnuts are
bitter, so decide on your own combination of nut butters. But having said that,
walnuts are undoubtedly the healthiest nut of the family. So choose wisely.
- Condensed milk too makes to the list. I used Amul’s
tinned condensed milk. This article hasn’t been sponsored by amul at all, but I
still mentioned the company’s name as it is one of the cleanest products on
shelf. The ingredient list contains just 2 things, milk solids and sugar. And you
just need these 2 for the recipe. Also the little tin of 200 gms, is easy to
open and can be recycled. So it’s a win win for me.
Enough of gyaan. Hopefully you all feel much enlightened. Now
to the recipe---
Ingredients
1 and ¼ cups of Chickpea Flour or Besan
2 Tbsp of ghee
2 Tbsp of Unsalted Butter
¼ cups of Walnuts butter
¼ cups of Peanut butter
¼ tsp of Cardamom Powder
A pinch of salt
200 gms tin of Sweetened Condensed Milk
Cheers!!
