Varo Sweet Recipe

                                    Varo Sweet Recipe

Ingredients:-

• Sugar 250 gms
• Water(2 tbsp) or oil (1 tbsp)
• A small cup of sliced dry fruits/nuts (Almonds, cashew nuts, unsalted pistachio, dried coconut, dried dates )
• Poppy seeds 2 tbsp
• Green cardamom 2-4 (Depends upon how strong flavor you prefer)

Method:-

1. Start with slicing the dry fruits, mix them together and keep aside.(NOTE: I added some raisins too, but the heat of sugar syrup almost charred those.So better use tough nuts)
2. You can rinse poppy seeds with hot water for couple of times and strain using tea strainer.(This is believed to reduce the morphine content of poppy seeds and also to remove the soluble dirt, if any.). Drain on kitchen towel to get rid of excess moisture.
3. Now keep a greased surface handy. Anything like a back of flat steel plate or kitchen platform ( Of course squeaky clean), but grease it well with edible oil ( no fragrant oil please).
4. Keep handy a bowl full of ice cubes or chilled water, just in case you scald yourself with hot sugar syrup.
5. Now in a thick bottom pan or iron kadai, mix sugar and water/oil, cardamom seeds (green elaichi ) and mix well. On medium flame of burner, keep stirring the mixture, making sure, no nasty lumps of sugar are present.Break the lumps if any, with the spatula ( Be sure, you are using spatula made from steel or good quality wood, coz many so called heat resistant spatulas succumb to the heat of caramelized sugar.)
6. Now be alert, monitor carefully, and as soon as the sugar melts, add the strained poppy seeds.(Be careful, if the seeds still have some water around it, there might be spluttering.So make sure you strained and kinda soaked excess water using kitchen towel.). Stir well.
7. Now depending upon how chewy or how crispy /hard you want your Varo to be (instructions given above the ingredients list), switch off the gas when the colour of sugar syrup changes to preferred colour, I chose it to be amber (Ideal).
8. Immediately put all the sliced nuts and mix well. You have to do this quickly or else there wont be even distribution of nuts.
9. Spread the mixture on a greased surface . Now the benefit of using the back of plate is that you can just tap the plate so as to get rid of tiny bubbles in the mixture. Also you can tilt the plate to spread the mixture without touching the surface (with spatula) of the mixture. It is believed that touching the surface of the praline make it lose its glaze or shine. Never tried smoothing the layer with spatula so cannot be sure if that's the case for real.In any case do not worry about smoothing the surface, the beauty of a varo lies in the uneven peaks and lows made by haphazardly placed nuts.
10. Let it cool down completely and after some time you will have a perfect crisp nutty brittle, for a crunchy munchy sweet treat.
11. Break it into pieces when its not completely hard. Or else use some pestle like tool , gently break the brittle into large pieces, once it is perfectly hard.
12. Store it in airtight container and it can last as long as few weeks to couple of months.