Ounde is a “ladoo” made with roasted ground rice, flavoured with cardamom, cooked in sweet milk and garnished with desiccated coconut and flaked almonds. I love making these little sweet ladoos especially at the weekend washed down with a lovely cup of tea; it’s a lovely sweet way to start the weekend. It takes me back to when we were all little, and my mum would almost every day make little treats like these for us after school.

Weekend was no exception, waking up on a Saturday or Sunday morning with the sweet smell of something delicious wafting through the house was enough to get us out of bed. Mum always made these “ounde” with roasted ground rice but you can always substitute with Semolina making “suji ladoo”. Roasted ground rice is more time consuming because you need to roast the whole grain rice, then using a grinder, grind the rice to a fine powder, and sieve the powder to obtain the very fine powder.  I am lucky because I don’t have to do all of this; mum still sends me the finished product – readymade roasted ground rice. Lucky me xxx

Ingredients Makes approximately 20

• 1 cup roasted ground rice
• ½ cup sugar
• 2 cups liquid milk
• 1/3 cup coconut flakes
• Handful of almond- chopped
• Handful of flaked almond (optional)
• Sesame seeds (optional)
• 1 tablespoon ghee or butter plus 1 extra Tbs once cooked
• ½ tsp ground cinnamon

Method

1. In a mixing bowl, add the ground rice, sugar, cardamom powder and mix to combine all.
2. In a heavy pan, melt the ghee/butter, add the chopped almond. Fry them gently taking care not to let them burn. Turn the heat on low.
3. Add the milk; be careful as it might spit. Give it a good stir.
4. As it starts to boil, slowly add the dry ingredients stirring regularly until it absorbs all the liquid, this will happen very quickly.
5. Turn the heat off add the reserved tablespoon of butter, Stir rigorously.
6. In a large tray, scatter the desiccated coconut. As the “Ounde” mixture cools down a bit shape into small balls. Roll in the coconut and scatter with the flaked almond or sesame seeds if using.
7. Enjoy, can be eaten while still warm or cold. These will keep well for 2-3 days in the fridge.

Brinda’s Note: Whenever I make these I always make some extra for my day time snack. As it’s made with rice, it’s quite a wholesome little snack, instead of eating other unhealthy nibbles.