Gavalu, Sweet biscuits & Putnalu Chikki

Ingredients:

• Whole Wheat Flour- 1 1/2 cup
• Semolina/Rawa- 1/4 cup
• Melted hot ghee- 1-2 tbsp
• Jaggery- 1 cup grated
• Water-1 cup
• Salt- 1/8 tsp
• Oil- for deep frying
• Putnalu/Roasted Chana dal- 1/2 to 3/4 cup

Method:

1. Grate jaggery and add to 1/2 cup water. Let it melt and then strain the liquid to remove dirt. 
2. Add salt, semolina/rawa to whole wheat flour and mix once. Now to this add hot ghee and start  mixing.
3. Then add water, spoonfuls at a time to made a dough. Knead it till it doesn't stick to hands and let it rest for 20-30 minutes.
5. Cover with lid or damp cloth to prevent drying.
6. After 30 minutes, knead it again for 5 minutes and make tiny balls. 
7. We can at this stage roll out one to two rotis and cut those into 1 inch diamond shapes like in the picture. 
8. With the rest of the dough, make smaller balls, the size of a marble. 
9. Flatten each ball a little. 
10. Take a fork and press the flattened piece of dough lightly, rolling it over. The fork will give ridges on the dough. By rolling it we'll get the curvature and the result will look like a shell. 
11. In case you have or can find the 'gavalu peeta/board' use that as it is designed exclusively to prepare these. 
13. Once done heat the jaggery water and let it come to one-string consistency. Heat oil simultaneously and fry the diamond shapes till golden brown.
14. Take excess oil on a tissue paper and to these add the hot jaggery syrup one spoon at a time.
15. Toss the biscuits to make sure each one is coated with the syrup. 
16. It took me about 3 tsp of syrup. Let it remaining syrup keep bubbling on simmer. 
17. Set these aside on greased plate separating so that they don't stick to each other. 
18. Now fry the gavalu in batches till golden brown. 
19. Set all aside on a tissue paper. 
20. When the jaggery syrup attains the soft ball consistency turn off the heat. (Soft ball stage is when we add a drop of jaggery syrup to water and it forms a ball)
21. Add the fried gavalu to the jaggery and mix gently to coat each one with the syrup. 
22. Let it cool enough so that we can separate those from the jaggery and plate on a greased plate.  
24. Don't let it cool completely as it will harden up.
25. Let those sit to dry and the store in an air tight box away from dampness.
26. Now here we are left with jaggery syrup and the bottom of the pan. 
27. We need not throw this away.
28. Instead dry roast the putnalu and melt this hardened syrup by adding 2-3 tbsp of water.
29. Once the syrup melts. let it bubble to lose the excess water we added. 
30. Thrown in the roasted putnalu and mix well. 
31. Turn of the heat once the mix becomes sticky and lumpy. 
32. Now we can either grease our palms are roll this mixture into small balls or grease a plate and pour onto it.
33. Spread it evenly on the plate and let it sit for 5 minutes. Now run a greased knife and cut into pieces. 
34. Let it coll completely and then break along the cut lines.
35. Store in an airtight container. 

Notes: 

• The syrup will largely depend on the type of jaggery we use. There will be times when the syrup looks good but then ends up too sticky or too hard.
• It happened with me and I had a trouble shaping the balls of putnalu mixture. Hence I made a slab out of it. 
• Also the jaggery might melt a little later on and form a layer at the bottom of the stored container. 
• If you feel doubtful just bubble the syrup to the one string consistency even  for the gavalu. That will help prevent any further messing up of the sweet. Also in that case reduce the quantity of the jaggery to half.