Pista Sandesh

Diwali is all about sharing sweets,gifts and enjoying with fire crackers.Home made sweets is all that we used to look for during Diwali,store bought are quite rare for us.

I made this pista sandesh as a sweet for Diwali. I have made quite some adjustments to the classic sandesh and made it into pista sandesh with a few pista ground into fine powder and added it to Ricotta cheese.I had a lot of ricotta cheese so used it instead of fresh home made paneer.The results were no different.

Ingredients,
Ricotta cheese - 1 cup
Pista - 4 tablespoons
Green cardamom- 3-4 ( only seeds)
Saffron strands- a pinch
Sugar - 6 tablespoons.
Coarsely ground pista - enough for decorating.

1. Powder cardamom seeds and pista into fine powder.
2. In a pan take ricotta cheese and add the powdered pista and cardamom.
3. Add saffron strands and sugar.Mix well
4. Keep the pan on the stove on low flame and keep stirring for 20 minutes.
5. Initially the mix gets watery and it slowly solidifies.
6. After 20 minutes the mix slowly gets to leave the edges of the pan.
7. Switch off the stove and transfer it to a bowl.
8. Knead well and press small parts into desired shapes.
9. Top with coarsely ground pista pieces in the middle.

Make pista and cardamom powder and add it to

ricotta cheese.

Add saffron strands and sugar.

Start stirring on a low falme .

Keep stirring until the mix starts leaving the edges of the 

pan,it takes almost 20 minutes.Tranfer it to a bowl.

Allow it to cool.

Knead well,take small parts and press them into desired

shapes.

Pista Sandesh.