Dates and nuts milk powder barfi

First, chop the seedless dates finely or best to pulse in a blender in short bursts or else it will turn to a sticky ball .Keep the nuts powdered or slivered coarsely.

Now take a pan , add the ghee and the slivered nuts, on a low flame, keep stirring them together toil the dates seem to be soft and smooth in texture. Around 3 minutes is all it takes, remove and keep aside to cool.

Then take a nonstick board and place the dates mixture, work it to a ball first and then flatten it out , Next wrap it in cling wrap or aluminium foil and keep in fridge to rest for 2 hours..

Next prepare the sweet mava filling mixture which is actually the pedha mixture , so if you have left over barfis, use it to make the filling!

Take ingredients for mava making from list above. Boil the water or milk well, add the melted ghee to it.

Quickly add the milk powder , sugar and cardamom powder and mix well using a spatula , by now the pedha mixture will look like a smooth dough. Like a thick poori dough.

You can keep it immediately on a non stick pan to keep stirring and making it a little more dry if you find it a bit too soft to handle.

Add more milk powder while on stove to bring consistency to a thick dough and make it non sticky. Do not add any additional water or milk.

Remove immediately and let it cool. You can keep it in fridge for half an hour to make it firm and easy to roll out for filling.

Take out the mava dough from the fridge, it would have hardened a bit.dough is very workable. Place the pedha dough between plastic sheet, use a rolling pin to flatten it to thick sheet , decide the thickness of filling you want .

TO ASSEMBLE THE DATES, NUTS AND MAVA BARFI. Remove the dates wrapped in cling wrap and you will see it hardened to a log like texture.

Flatten it out to two sheets. Work on a non stick board . Remove one date sheet . Place the mava filling sheet which is now hardened and keep the second date sheet on top.

Now apply pressure gently with a rolling pin on top of the dates mava sandwich to get even top. Again cling warp it and keep in fridge for an hour. Remove from fridge, remove the cling wrap,

you will see a perfect slab of dates and nuts barfi sandwich . Make the slices as desired . Store each slice between butter papers to keep it non sticky and store in fridge.

Suggestions : Use left over mava barfis to make the filling. Instead of making a rectangular slab , make a cylindrical roll of the dates and mava mixture, and cut into slices like cookies after unwrapping the cling wrap .