Kardantu / Antina Unde / Dinkache Ladoo / Gond ke Ladu

Cold weather has arrived with the beautiful fall colors in my part of the world. Every season demands special delicacies. For this winter, I made Dry Fruits Ladoo with edible gum. 

Call it Antina Unde or Kardantu (in Kannada) or Dinkache Laadu (in Marathi) or Gond ke Ladoo (in Hindi), this sweet is like a homemade nutrition bar made of a healthy sweetener - jaggery.

Ingredients:
Jaggery / Gul / Gud (grated) - 1 1/2 cups
Desiccated (Dry) Coconut (grated) - 3/4 cup
Edible Gum / Antu / Dink / Gond - 1/4 cup
Whole Almonds / Badam - 1/4 cup
Whole Cashews / Kaju - 1/4 cup
Dry Dates / Khajur / Kharik - 1/4 cup
Dry Cranberries - 1/4 cup
Poppy Seeds / Khuskhus - 1 1/2 tbsp
Ghee / Clarified Butter - 5 tbsp
Green Cardamom / Elaichi - 4 pods
Nutmeg / Jaiphal (grated) - 1/8 tsp

How to make Dinkache Ladoo or Kardantu:

• Crush cardamom seeds in a mortar pestle to a fine powder.
• Finely chop almonds, cashews, dates and cranberries, using a knife or a food processor. Keep each ingredient separately. 
• Generally, raisins (dry grapes) are used in Kardantu. I used dry cranberries as a substitute for soft raisins. You can use any other nuts like walnuts (akrot), pecans as well.
• Heat about 2 tbsp ghee in a heavy bottom pan. Add edible gum and fry until gum puffs up and changes color. When the fried gum cools down, crush them slightly. Set it aside. In the same pan, shallow fry other ingredients one at a time - chopped almonds, chopped cashews, chopped dates, chopped cranberries, poppy seeds and desiccated coconut. Keep adding little ghee to the pan while frying as required. You can be more generous with ghee as well. Make sure you fry each ingredient at low flame until the raw smell goes off and color changes slightly.
• Along with poppy seeds, you can also add white sesame seeds (til).
• Mix all the fried ingredients and set it aside.
• Lastly, prepare the jaggery syrup. If jaggery is not available, brown sugar would be a good substitute. 
• In a heavy bottom pan, add grated jaggery and 1/2 cup water. Bring it to a boil. Continue cooking until the syrup turns sticky. Add cardamom and nutmeg powders. To test the stickiness of the syrup, take a bowl of water. When you add a drop of sticky syrup to the bowl of water, the syrup must form a ball. If the syrup dissolves, cook the syrup slightly longer. Turn off the heat and add the fried ingredients. Mix well. When the Ladoo mix slightly cools, grease your hands with ghee and make round balls.

These Dry Fruits Ladoo with Edible Gum have a good shelf life even at room temperature. For a longer shelf life, keep them refrigerated. Enjoy!