Total time: about 40 min.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups unsalted cashews
- 1 1/2 cup non fat milk powder
- 1 1/4 cup sugar
- 4 pods cardamom
- 1/8 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
- 3 Tbsp water
Procedure:
Dry grind the cashews into a fine powder. You can use a coffee or spice grinder. I recently purchased the Magic Bullet and used the dry grind blade with the small cup.
As the part of the grinding process, the cashews leave oil and the cashew paste sticks to the sides. Just scrape it into a mixing bowl and continue grinding the remaining into a paste. The end result looks like this:
Double Boiler: This used to heat materials gently without burning or scorching them. You can make your own simple double boiler by following instructions here.
Add the sugar and milk powder mixture to the mixing bowl. You can add the vanilla extract at this point. shell the cardamom pods and crush them into a fine powder and add to the mix.
Using a few drops of water at a time, knead the mixture till it turns into a smooth dough consistency. Do not use too much water. The cashew powder will leave oil as you continue to knead and this will help with the process.
Roll out the dough ball on butter/wax paper to about 5 mm thick using a rolling pin. Bring out the pizza cutter and cut into diamond shapes.
To make it look really professional, you can press "vark" on it. Vark is a thin foil made of silver usually and is used in garnishing South Asia sweets.
There are other ways to garnish these, I'm sure, such as sprinkling a little crushed pistachio .....
Feel free to share any other ideas in the comments.