Today is Vara Mahalakshmi festival celebrated across south india. God’s grace this coincides as my 200th recipe as well to this blog. To celebrate the festival and also the milestone presenting this unique sweet dish.

This recipe is similar to puran poli/holige which just looks like any other roti. This is stuffed with delicious sweet filling made of fresh strawberry mixed with semolina/rava and brown sugar. The stuffing can be made in many variations as per the taste and preference.

Rawa kesari is a popular south indian sweet made from semolina during the festive season. Using strawberries to the traditional rawa kesari adds a pleasant fruity flavour with the dark pinkish hue. This is used as stuffing to Parathas.

This paratha/poli by itself is a delicious sweet and often eaten as such or it can be served with a spoon full of nuts, dallop of ice cream/ cream to serve as a dessert.

Yields: 6-8parathas
Preparation time: 5minutes
Cooking time: 20-25 mins (for stuffing)
20-25mins (for roasting parathas)

Ingredients:

For stuffing:

• Cleaned and chopped strawberries-10-12
• Semolina/rawa-1/2cup
• Olive butter/ghee-1tbsp
• Brown sugar/coconut sugar-1/3cup (or more as sweet preferred)
• Cardamom powder-1/2tsp
• Vanilla essence-1tsp

For the dough:

• Whole wheat flour-1 1/2cup
• Salt-pinch
• Water
• Olive butter -1tbsp +for toasting parathas.

Procedure:

For dough:

• Combine wheat flour, salt, olive butter in a bowl and knead into soft dough by adding little water at a time.
• Grease a bowl and roll the dough to coat with oil, wrap it with cling film and rest for at least for an hour.
• Meanwhile prepare the stuffing.

For stuffing:

• Heat 1/2tbsp of olive butter in a pan and roast semolina/rawa for a minute on a medium flame stirring continuously (continuous stirring helps even roasting of semolina).
• Once roasted transfer to a plate and set aside.
• Now in the same pan add remaining 1/2tbsp olive butter/ghee add chopped strawberries and saute for couple of minutes or until strawberries are soft.
• then add 1 1/2cup water, sugar and let it boil.
• Once it comes to boil reduce the flame and add roasted semolina/rawa keep stirring to avoid lump formation.
• Simmer until the mixture leaves the side of the pan. (as we are using this as a stuffing it has to be simmered until thick so approx. 8-10minutes and sometime depends on the type of semolina used so keep working until thick)
• Finally add cardamom powder, vanilla essence mix turn off the flame and allow it to cool a bit.

For parathas:

• Divide the dough to equal portions, roll out each portion of the dough into a small 3-4” circle place a portion of filling in the centre and seal it properly from all edges like how we do for parathas.
• Now press it from the centre and roll it into 4-5”diameter circle.
• Heat a non-stick tava/ griddle and cook it till it turns golden brown in colour from both sides.
• Repeat with the remaining dough and stuffing

Serve hot/warm.

Note:

• Usually for kesari halwa the semolina/rava :water ratio is 1:3 but here as this is used as a stuffing I used less water ratio. The ratio varies depending on type of semolina used.
• If the stuffing goes gluey just add some more butter/ghee and cook on a medium flame until it thickens.
• I used extra coarse semolina/rawa.
• Fresh strawberries add taste to the dish even it can be made using just essences.

I am bringing this recipe to Angies Fiesta Friday #28