Glass-thin jaggery brittle packed with roasted peanuts and toasted little millet rava, snapping cleanly and tasting of caramel and cardamom.
Ingredients
From the TrooFoodz pantry
Fresh
- Raw peanuts 2 cups
- Jaggery, grated 300 g
- Ghee 1 tbsp, plus extra for greasing
- Cardamom powder ¼ tsp
- Salt a generous pinch
Method
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Roast and skin
Roast the peanuts until the skins crack and the nuts smell sweet, cool, then rub them clean and split them roughly in half so the cross-section shows in the finished slab.
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Toast the rava
Dry-toast Sprouted Little Millet Rava for three minutes until sandy and fragrant. It has to be bone dry or it will introduce steam into the syrup.
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Grease everything first
Rub ghee over the back of a steel plate, a rolling pin and a spatula, and set them within arm's reach. Once the syrup is ready there is no time to hunt for anything.
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Take it to hard-crack
Melt the jaggery with the ghee and a splash of water, then cook without stirring to 150C. Test by dropping a little into cold water: it must set brittle and snap, not bend.
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Fold off heat
Kill the heat, tip in the peanuts, rava, cardamom and salt, and stir just enough to coat. Every extra second on the heat darkens the jaggery towards bitterness.
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Roll thin at once
Pour onto the greased plate and roll out to two or three millimetres while the mass is still molten and obliging.
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Score, then snap
Mark squares with a greased knife while it is warm and pliable, then leave to cool completely before breaking along the lines.
Why this works
Hard-crack is the whole recipe. At 150C nearly all the water has left the jaggery, so it sets into a true glass that shatters instead of pulling at the teeth; stop at soft-ball and you get a chewy slab that will not release from the plate. The toasted rava scatters through the syrup and gives the brittle a fine, sandy grip against the smooth peanuts.
Make it your own
- Peanuts → Sesame seeds Classic til chikki; roll thinner still as the seeds are smaller.
- Sprouted Little Millet Rava → Sprouted Jowar Rava Coarser grain and a more neutral flavour.
- Ghee → Coconut oil Vegan version; grease generously as it sets firmer.
