Karthigai Pori Urundai

Ingredients
Pori: 4 cups
Grated Jaggery: 3/4 cup
Ginger powder(Sukku podi): 1/2 tsp
Cardomom powder: 1/4 tsp
Water: 2 tablespoon
Ghee: 1 tsp (to grease the hands)


Procedure:
Step1:
Take the pori (puffed rice) in a wide vessel. Add cardomom and ginger powder it  and keep it aside

Step2:
Heat jaggery with just enough water to immerse

Step3:
Once all the jaggery is dissolved strain it to filter out any impurities


Step4:
Again heat the syrup.After a while it will start boiling


Step5:
Have a cup of water by the side and keep checking for rolling consistency
How to check rolling consitency?
Pour little bit of syrup in water. You should be able to take it and roll.
Basically the jaggery should not dissolve in water

Step6:
Quickly remove from stove and pour the syrup little by little on the puffed rice. Simultanously stir the pori with a big spoon to mix well.

Step7:
Now grease your hands with ghee and roll them into balls. You may want to do this step quickly as the jaggery will soon start to harden


Tips

• Do not put the puffed rice in jaggery syrup directly. Only the syrup has to be added to the pori
• Do not roll the balls too tight. It will become very hard
• As a variation, small bits of coconut and pottukadalai (fried gram) can also be added
• If you are going to make this single handed make it only with 4 cups.Otherwise by the time we roll the balls the mixture will harden
• I made another batch with around 5 cups of pori with 1 cup of jaggery  to make the cone shaped karthigai pori (paruppu thengai).For this I used aluminium foil to make the cone mould.Slightly grease the cone and put the pori jaggery mixture inside this cone and leave it for 10 minutes. After that remove the foil.You get the traditional paruppu thengai!