Thursday, January 11, 2018

Kalkandu Pongal/Rock Candy Sweet Pongal/Kalkandu Sadham

Rock Sugar/Rock candy/Sugar Candy is known as Kalkandu in Tamil, this rock sugar is used in South Indian cuisine for making many delightful desserts out of it. My today's recipe is an another Sankranthi special sweet pongal or sweet rice you can prepare easily with sugar candies or rock candies. This pongal dish calls for milk, which makes this more creamy. Usually prepared with raw rice and split moongdal, this sweet rice is definitely a must to try if you want to prepare a different sweet pongal on Sankranthi. But my recipe calls for just raw rice. Adding split moongdal or skipping the moongdal doesnt change the taste of this dish.

Kalkandu Pongal, Rock Sugar Sweet Pongal

For making this lipsmacking sweet pongal i went for pressure cooking method, which makes the life easier than preparing them in a traditional way. But take care to put the rice and milk mixture in a separate vessel before cooking them in pressure cooker. Cooking directly the rice and milk in pressure cooker may spew out while whistling, obviously you will spend your time in cleaning your stove top while whistling. Its better to put everything in a separate vessel to avoid spew out.And this delicious Kalkandu sakkarai goes to this week's blogging marathon as am running this week with Sankranthi special as theme.

Kalkandu Sadham,Rock Candy Pongal

1/2cup Rice
2cups Milk
3/4cup Kalkandu/Rock sugar/Sugar candy
1/2tsp Cardamom powder
3tbsp Ghee
Few cashews
A pinch Edible camphor (pacha karpooram)

Wash the rice thoroughly and take the rice and milk in a vessel. Drop this vessel in a pressure cooker and pressure cook for 4 to 5 whistles.

Meanwhile grind the kalkandu/rock sugar as fine powder.

Once the steam gets released, tranfer the cooker rice-milk mixture to a heavy bottomed pan. Add the powdered rock sugar and cook everything in simmer for a while.

Sugar candy Rice, Kalkandu Pongal

Meanwhile heat the ghee in a small pan, add the cashews and fry until they turns golden brown.

Add these fried cashewnuts,cardamom powder, edible camphor to the cooked sweet rice, give a stir.

Serve hot.
BMLogo

11 comments:

Srivalli said... Reply To This Comment

Wonderful pongal with kalkandu Priya, I love this so much!

Padmajha said... Reply To This Comment

Bookmarking this too Priya. Looks so tempting!

Usha said... Reply To This Comment

Sinfully divine and inviting Pongal.

Kalyani said... Reply To This Comment

I made this last year and we loved it :-) pics r great, priya

Harini R said... Reply To This Comment

I love the sugar candy pongal. Addition of paccha karpooram sounds very aromatic.

Jayashree said... Reply To This Comment

I have only tried pongal with jiggery. This sounds delicious.

Pavani said... Reply To This Comment

What a traditional and delicious pongal this is Priya. I like the tip of cooking in a separate vessel in the pressure cooker.

Sandhya Ramakrishnan said... Reply To This Comment

Priya, this is my favorite ever. Love the flavor of kalkandu and I am so tempted to eat some right now.

Chef Mireille said... Reply To This Comment

I made this a few years ago and it is one of my all time fave version of rice pudding

Nisha said... Reply To This Comment

This is my husband's favourite. Whenever he craves sweets, he always asks for this. It looks so luscious and tempting.

Sowmya :) said... Reply To This Comment

That’s such a simple and delicious looking Pongal. Yum