Out of all the Indian sweets I’ve ever eaten, barfi is my favourite. This barfi is usually made with ground cashews. Since it’s much easier to find ground almonds in the shops, we’re going to use them to make a 2 ingredient vegan barfi!

We’re making this classic sweet by using just ground almonds and sugar. I’m not counting water as an ingredient because everyone should have access to clean drinking water. This recipe makes about 400g of barfi, but you can always scale it up or down if you’d like. The idea is to use about half as much water as sugar, and approximately the same quantity of sugar as ground almonds or ‘almond flour’. You could always increase or decrease the quantity of sugar depending on how sweet you like your dessert.

The first step to make a vegan barfi is to create a sugar syrup. Add sugar and water to a saucepan and heat it up until the sugar melts completely. Heat this up until the syrup gets really thick and reduces to approximately half the volume it started out with. You can take a drop between your index finger and thumb and test how ‘sticky’ it is. I find that this hurts a lot since the syrup is really hot. So, I always skip this and just wait until it looks like it has reduced by half.

The next step is to turn the heat as low as possible and add the almond flour! Keep mixing until it gets to a dough-like consistency. You know it’s ready when you can roll a tiny bit of the mixture into a ball without it sticking to your hands. The hard work is finally over and now all we need to do is wait and shape! Once the dough cools down enough to touch, roll it out, cut into diamonds, and serve!

This recipe is a Diwali 2020 special – in a time when we want to celebrate but also can’t really go out or buy a lot of ingredients. You might be interested in similar recipes that are easy to make and yet feel fancy. Specially, this 5 ingredient hazelnut chocolate barfi inspired by this recipe!

Vegan Badam Barfi

Recipe by EshCourse: DessertCuisine: IndianDifficulty: 2

Servings

400

g

Cooking time

20

minutes

Ingredients

• 200g Almond flour

• 150g Sugar

• 100ml Water

Directions

• Add the sugar and water to a saucepan and on high heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
• Keep stirring and heating the sugar syrup until it reduces to about half it’s starting volume.
• Turn the heat down to minimum and add the ground almonds.
• Mix well and keep stirring until it forms a dough. It shouldn’t be sticky, but can be crumbly.
• Spread it out on a flat surface so it can cool down faster. Once it’s cool enough to handle by hand, knead it together and roll it out into a rectangle.
• Trim the edges and cut the dough into diamond shapes. The edges can be rolled out again to form diamonds, or they can be made into tiny spheres called ‘laddus’.
• Serve cold!

Recipe Video

Header Photo by Mishaal Zahed on Unsplash