Seven Cup Cake / Indian Fudge-Cake

To celebrate my husband's marathon run, my mom made this Indian sweet. It is a soft and crumbly sweet flavored with saffron, cardamom, coconut, milk, ghee, and chickpea flour. This is another recipe that comes from my mother's aunt. She sent a box of this sweet for us, and it was divine! Handmade sweets prepared by seasoned cooks are far superior than any fancy store bought sweets!

This is an extremely easy "cake" that derives its name because of the total number of cups of ingredients required (1 cup chickpea flour + 1 cup coconut + 1 cup milk + 3 cups sugar + 1 cup ghee = 7 cups). However, I convinced my mom to "reduce" the quantity of ghee and sugar by a small margin. Of course, the more ghee that is added, the more softer, fragrant and tastier the burfi would be!

Ingredients (approximately 25-30 pieces):

1. 1 cup besan / chickpea flour / kadala maavu
2. 1 cup grated coconut
3. 1 cup milk
4. 2/3 cup + 2 tablespoons ghee / clarified butter (according to the recipe, 1 cup of ghee is required)
5. 2.5 cups sugar
6. pinch of saffron mixed in a tablespoon of warm milk
7. 3/4 teaspoon powdered cardamom

Preparation:

1. In a non-stick pan or heavy-bottomed pan, add besan, coconut, milk, sugar, and 2/3 cup of ghee and stir on medium heat. 
2. Keep stirring until the mixture thickens slightly and begins to bubble (takes about 22 minutes from the start; refer to the picture above)
3. Add 2 tablespoons of ghee and the saffron, reduce the heat to low and continue stirring for 5 minutes until the mixture thickens a little more. 
4. Now add the cardamom powder and continue to stir until the mixture begins to leave the sides of the pan (takes 5 more minutes)
5. Remove from heat and immediately transfer to a greased plate (greased with ghee). Grease the bottom of a flat bowl with ghee and smoothen the top of the hot fudge. 
6. When still hot, score the fudge into diamonds or cubes or trapezoids or whatever shapes catch your fancy. 
7. When cool, gently remove the individual pieces and store in an air-tight container for up to 10 days. If the weather is warm, store in the fridge. 

This is an extremely easy sweet to prepare. It literally requires dumping the ingredients in a pan and stirring till everything leaves the sides of the pan.