Ellunda / Sesame seed ladoo / Til ke Ladoo

I have always been a fan of it. So when Papa mummy visited us, I asked them to get it. Now once you trigger your taste buds of the long forgotten taste of this ladoo, instead of calming down the craving, it gets doubled. 

Its just one of those cravings that hit me, which resulted in multiple visits to the Indian store. Every time I was there they had ran out of stock for these Ellunda.  So finally I gave up. After all its just a matter of 3-4 ingredients combining together to make these. So I bought the ingredients and made it at home. 

Every bite of it gets so juicy with the jaggery in it. These are yumm. You've got to try it.

Ingredients

1. 2 cups of sesame seeds (preferably black)
2. 1/2 tsp of dry ginger powder
3. 2 tbsp of ghee or clarified butter
4. 1 cup of jaggery
5. 5-6 tbsp of water
6. A bowl of drinking water

Method

• In a heavy bottom skillet, take the sesame seeds and roast it. Once the pan is hot, simmer it to medium heat and keep stirring it, else the sesame seeds may get burnt.They would start to splitter/pop and would turn crisp/crunchy on biting them.
• Remove it from the heat and spread it on a plate.
• In the same skillet, take the jaggery and ghee. Add 5-6 tbsp of water. Place it on the stove and heat it. Once hot, simmer it. Add the dry ginger powder and let the jaggery melt completely and form a syrup. The syrup should be of the consistency such that if you take a drop of it and put it in a bowl of water , it should remain as a drop and when you try rolling it, it should roll into a ball.
• Once the consistency of the jaggery syrup is attained, turn off the heat and add the roasted sesame seeds into it and mix it well so that the jaggery syrup gets coated on the sesame seeds evenly.
• Let it cool down just a little so that it may not burn your fingers as you try to start shaping them into balls/ladoos.
• Dip your hand in the bowl full of drinking water and pick enough amount of sesame seed mixture and start shaping them into ladoos. Line them onto a plate. 
• Store it in an air tight container once they cool down.

Tips

1. You could chose to use white sesame seeds as well, to make these ladoos.
2. These days the sesame seeds come processed in sealed packs and hence are free from impurities. If you happen to buy unpacked/unprocessed sesame seeds, make sure you wash and dry them in sun and remove the impurities from it before you go ahead making it. 
3. Make sure to get the right consistency of the jaggery syrup. Else it would get really difficult to form balls out of them.
4. Do not let the mixture cool down completely. Start working with it as soon as it is manageable to shape them with your hand. Else the jaggery would dry up and it would get difficult to shape them.
5. I used dry ginger powder to give it a flavour. Adding cardamom powder is another alternative to bring in flavour.