Milk Toffee (Sinhalese Kiri Aluwa)
Sri Lanka is located so close to Chennai but I have never had a chance to visit this beautiful land or taste their fine delicacies. My knowledge of Sri Lanka is limited to all those bad things that show up on news. When I heard the ‘upanyasam’ by Smt Vishaka Hari’s on ‘Sundara Kandam’, I was very much intrigued about Sri Lanka – the beautiful land and its famous delicacies and decided to check out Sri Lanka’s recipes.
When I googled for Sri Lankan sweets, I found quite a lot of drool worthy ones. However I tried ‘Kiri Aluwa’ as it was so easy to prepare. Srilanka’s Kiri Aluwa translates to diamond shaped milk sweet. There are only three ingredients. This recipe is based on several sources from the internet. Sri Lankans must have a very sweet tooth. Some recipes suggest using condensed milk and sugar.Since I cut down a lot on sweets and sugary things, I used evaporated milk instead. I felt the recipe was close to South Indian Palkova which is traditionally prepared in Tamilnadu from fresh milk.
Though the traditional Kiri Aluwa looks like a square burfi, I decided to mold them into toffees. These sweets were so addictive that they disappeared so fast. You can add coarsely ground cashews to give it a cashew flavor. I prepared the sweet when my baby was fast asleep. I didn’t want to wake him up my grinding the cashews. So I just skipped them. But we never missed cashews. It tasted good as such.
Its Navarathiri time. Most of us have set up ‘golu’ of various dolls. We also have so many visitors. Why not pack these Kiri aluwas in goody bags for young visitors?
Ingredients:
Evaporated Milk – 1 Can (If you are using condensed milk, you may omit sugar)
Sugar – 10 Tablespoons
Vanilla Essence – 2 tsp
Broken Cashews – 10 (Optional)
Butter to grease the plate
Preparation:
1. In a tall wide pan, heat evaporated milk. Add 10 teaspoons of sugar and constantly stir
2. After stirring for 5 minutes, add 2 tsp of vanilla essence and stir again
3. Keep stirring till the milk reduces in quantity, turns slightly golden, doesn’t stick to the pan and looks like this
4. Remove from flame transfer to a buttered plate and roll into toffees. Cut wax paper into small squares. Place each toffee into a wax paper square and roll
We can store these toffees for at least a week.
Saranya's Kitchen 