Being completely bored and I decided to give Badam Barfi a second shot. My mom is a pro at this and my brothers and I would constantly be walking into the kitchen to get us some more.

Of course I asked her for the recipe and if you follow this you should be able to end up with heavenly diamond shaped objects which everyone will be vying for. I usually work better with dropping in ingredients based on what I feel while cooking as opposed to following numbers, but I shall put down the numbers here for anyone else who might want to follow. Also I took some shortcuts along the way, I will put down what my mom told me to do, and what I did. You are welcome to pick.

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  • Badam (Almonds) – 2.5 cups
  • Sugar – 4.25 cups
  • Unsalted butter – 550 grams or so
  • Milk – you’ll need a little… About a cup I think

Algorithm

  • My mom’s recipe said to soak the almonds in water overnight in order to make it easy to remove the skin. Yeah, I didn’t pre-plan, so my method was dunk the almonds in water and set it on the stove to boil.

    In about 10 minutes or lesser, pick out an almond and the skin should be lose. If not leave it there for longer. Essentially you should pick out the almonds if you are able to take an almond squeeze the skin and see the almond fly right out.

  • Peel the almonds. Shouldn’t be too hard, hold and squeeze the white almonds should come right out. peeled almonds

  • Making the ghee - Heat a pan and drop the sticks of unsalted butter in.

  • First the butter melts, and then a white foamy thing forms on top. I got rid of this using a spoon and a paper napkin or two.

  • after a while you should see the liquid starts bubbling, after this stops, and the liquid is clear, keep the ghee aside.

  • Look at this site for more detailed instructions (Every Day Maven – How to make Ghee)

  • Grind the peeled almonds with milk to a thick white paste. The recipe said the paste should be thick, but lose enough to stir. She compared it to Idli batter. In any case I’d say as thick as cake batter before it goes into the oven.\

    Ofcourse I didn’t know how much milk that meant. So i added a bit of milk with the almonds and blended it. Kept adding milk every time it got stuck. At some point in time all the almonds had become paste and it was a fine thick paste.

    Make sure you have no chunks

    almond paste

  • Heat the almond paste with some ghee in a non stick pan (medium heat) (make sure the pan is big enough to add the sugar as well). Do this for about 5 minutes. I assume the reason for this is to get rid of the raw smell. Make sure you keep stirring. Do not let it stick to the pan. heat almond paste

  • Heat the paste with some ghee

  • Add the sugar to this mix. Don’t panic, the sugar will melt and the whole thing will become all liquidy. Make sure you keep stirring so that almond paste mixes with the sugar syrup.

  • Keep stirring till those white chunks disappear

  • Now stir… for quite a while I might add. Some stages you will pass till it finally becomes a paste. You can keep adding more ghee as required … By the time I ended up with the paste I was left with very little ghee.

     

  • it finally becomes very like a paste like. The video shows when its almost a paste  

     
     

  • At this point, take a flat plate like thing to pour the paste into. and grease it with ghee at the bottom and the sides. You could use a baking tray used for a cake 🙂!   greased pan

  • When the paste is pretty thick and and stirring is hard. Pour onto the plate. Use a flat bottomed thing and hammer it to make a flat surface, while it is hot. (it hardens pretty quickly)

  • Hammer it down to a flat surface flat surface

  • Let it cool for a while, and then take a knife and cut lines into it before it hardens completely, but is still a tad soft.  

  • In the mean while you can scrape the crumbs of the pan which you used to cook. Or maybe your friends have already gotten to it 🙂  

    cut pieces

Thats it for this post. Let me know how it turns out :).