Quick and simple sweet dishes you can try this Diwali

Bhubaneswar: Festive seasons call for adding sweet dishes to the daily food course and when it’s Diwali, varieties of sweets served on the tables should, at least, match the varieties of crackers that are to be burst.

After completing all the dusting, cleaning and decoration work on Diwali eve, it is difficult for anyone to spend hours in kitchen, making sweets for family and friends. Although, buying sweets from shops is a convenient option but there are risks of food adulteration and certain other health issues.

To answer to that dilemma, here are some quick and easy recipes of sweets you can try this Diwali:

1. Kalakand- This rich milk cake is loved by many. It needs just two major ingredients, i.e, milk and grated paneer/chenna and 15-20 minutes of cooking.  The grated paneer is added to thickened and sweetened milk or condensed milk and stirred for 15-20 minutes. The mixture is allowed to cool down for a couple of hours and then cut into pieces and served.
2. Barfi- Barfi can be prepared in different flavors now. The most popular ones are chocolate barfi and coconut barfi.  Although coconut barfi is comparatively easy to make, with just condensed milk and grated coconut, chocolate barfi would require chocolate powder, some dry fruits, khoya/mawa along with condensed milk. However, both the recipes are delicious and worth giving a try.
3. Dry fruit laddu-   this recipe is delicious and nutritious, especially for kids.  For making dry fruit laddus, roasted and roughly blended dry fruits like cashew, apricot, pistachios, and almond are knitted with slightly cooked dates and figs. Small portions are cut out from the mixture and rolled into balls. The laddus are served after cooling down. These can be stored in airtight containers for extended shelf life.
4. Gujiya- It is a crispy deep-fried pastry with fillings of almonds, nuts, coconut and mawa.
5. Shahi Tukda- It is an easy recipe of fried bread slices, soaked in milk and seasoned with nuts.
6. Rabdi-   It is a popular sweet dish prepared with milk and sugar. It can be flavored with dry fruits or saffron.
7. Kaju Katli- It is another authentic sweet dish made from cashew powder and sugar syrup.
8. Poha laddu-  It is prepared with a mixture of dried, roasted and powdered poha, grated and roasted coconut, ghee and jaggery.

There are various instant sweet mixtures available in the market nowadays like instant kheer, rasgulla, gulab jamoon mix. If you want to cheat the time in the kitchen, instant mix packs could be your savior. But certain people are allergic to some ingredients. So, do check the composition of the mix before buying.