Bean Flowers (Chikkudu poovullu)

Chikkudu poovullu, is easy and tasty recipe.

The name comes from its shape, which looks like a bean flower.

These days i prefer my son munching on these homemade sweets than other unhealthy stuff from outside.

Ingredients:

Plain flour (Maida) - 1 cup
Wheat Flour - 1 cup
Oil for deep fry
Jaggery (Unrefined sugar) - 2 cups

Step1: Mix plain and wheat flour. You can use just plain flour also for this recipe. I usually add wheat flour as i feel it is more healthy than plain flour.
Few tips for the flowers to be crispy

Tip 1: add a 2 tbsp of boiling oil to the flour and
mix before you make the dough

Tip 2: add water as little as possible to make dough
with this the flowers wont stick to each other and
will be very crispy

Follow above tips and knead the flour. Let it stand for half hour before you start making flowers from it.



Step2: make small dough balls and roll them into thin chapatis as shown in pic


Step3: cut the rolled chapati into small squares using knife. with rough dimension of 1.5" each side. some of the corner pieces wont be in square shape, remove them and add it to the dough to roll out again.


Step4: press the opposite tips of the square together as shown in pic. Then press the other 2 tips together in opposite direction. Does not it looks like bean flower :)




Step4: make flowers from the dough



Step5: Deep fry the flowers until they are brown. If you have another helping hand, one person can make the flowers and other can fry them.




Step6: Jaggery is usually sold in form of blocks. cut it into coarse power with knife. measure your fried flowers and take equal quantity of jaggery. Add little water along with jaggery in a huge pot (we will add bean flowers to this bowl, so it has to be big) and let it boil.Let it boil until jaggery is done.

Tip 3: Jaggery is done when you take a drop of it and
put it in a small bowl of water, it should become
solid. You should be able to take that drop from
the water easily. Thats the test for jaggery.




Step7: Once Jaggery is done, switch off the stove and add the flowers to it and mix properly so that all flowers are coated properly with jaggery.

Tasty Bean Flowers are ready :)

Once cooled, put them in air tight container and they will stay good for a month.

But at my home, how many ever i make they get over in couple of days.