Its festival time all over India, there seems to be no ending to us gorging on delicious festive foods. Ganesha Habba/Ganesh Chaturti – one of the festivals celebrated all over India. We have fond memories of this festival from our childhood. It’s so much of fun and celebration at home to pray Ganesha those three/five days. And the best part is, you get to eat varieties of special sweets/dishes on these days Kadabu, Karjikayi, Payasam, different varieties of rice items, the list goes on…………

Ganesha has been always a friend to us than a God from our childhood and it’s so special to prepare dishes for him as Naivedya – Prasadam. Here’s one of his favorite sweet - Karjikai recipe for all you people.

This sweet is very simple to prepare and the stuffing can be prepared with various ingredients.

Karjikai  

Ingredients for stuffing:

Finely grated Dry Coconut (Onna Kobarri)   – ¼ cup

Sugar – ½ cup or Jaggery – ½ cup

Raisins/ Cashwenut/Almond  – ¼ cup

Roasted Chirooti Rava – ¼ cup or Poppy Seeds (Ghasghase) – 5-6 tsps

Cardamom powder- 1 tsp

Ghee – 2 tsps

For Dough :

Maida (All purpose flour) – 1/2 cup

Salt to taste

Oil for frying

Dough :

Mix the Maida with salt and 2-3 tsps of oil to make soft Poori dough. Keep aside covered for half an hour.

Stuffing :

Take a nonstick pan, fry the dry coconut for 5 mins and keep aside. Dry roast the Rava or Poppy seeds for 5-7 mins and keep it to cool. In the same pan heat the Ghee and fry all the dry fruits until they turn light brown. 

Mix dry coconut, Rava, Sugar, dry fruits and Cardamom powder. 

Method :

Divide the dough and shape into small balls. Roll each dough ball with the rolling pin into a thin Poori. You get Karjikai moulds readily available in all the Indian stores. 

 Spread your Poori on the mould and add 1 ½ tsps of our stuffing in the center. Wet your finger and run it along the edges of the spread out dough with water and fold over to the opposite end to form a semi-circle shaped kajjikaya.

If you don’t have the Karjikai mould, add 1 ½ tsps of stuffing in the center of the Poori, wet your finger and run it along the edges of the spread out dough with water. Now fold over it to form a semicircle. Make sure you seal the edges properly and twist them to give neat edges to your Karjikai. 

Take a deep Pan/Kadai, heat the oil on a medium flame. Drop the Karjikai into the oil slowly and deep fry them till golden brown on a medium flame, turning them carefully to the other side so that it cooks on all sides.

You can cool the fried Karjikai and store these in air tight containers for 2-3 weeks.