Kācha Penda, kind of an instant Peda!!

I consider myself chashni challenged (difficulty in achieving the perfect consistency of sugar syrup) maybe the reason I excuse myself from attempting barfi recipes!! As a result, I have developed this special affability to Penda, and with the inclusion of this recipe, we now have the easiest Penda recipe there is. Of course, you will need some rich danedar mawa/khoa to make these Kacha Penda (Kacha means raw in Gujarati).  The usual way of making Penda require  cooking of mawa and sugar  to achieve the desired texture and colour. The cooking also helps increase the shelf life of the Penda.  Contrary to that when we simply  mix the mawa and bura sugar/ Indian powdered sugar and not cook it we have a kind of instant penda or Kacha Penda as this recipe calls it.  During festivals when we are in a constant lookout for the ways to reduce the time spent in the kitchen, such recipes are a boon.

Before I set out to do this series on fresh Prasads every day, I prepared mawa at home with 4 litres of good quality milk. Yes, it did take time and needed some effort but once the mawa was in place, creating the delicacies with it was quite convenient. Also, here in Singapore finding a good quality mawa is almost impossible.  The homemade mawa give such stunning color to the mawa that I have kind of developed a liking to make mawa at home. I plan to make it when I am cooking, that ways we aren’t spending too much time in the kitchen.

The recipe I share here is from Garyu Etlu Grayu a brilliant compendium of cookbooks by Rukshmaniben and Binduben Danthi. The books are classics that need to be shared as much as possible to help us all learn from their collective wisdom.