Sweet Pongal or Sakkarai Pongal for Toddlers

Pongal greetings to all our lovely readers. May the sweetness of overflowing pongal fill your home with harmony and happiness. Today on this auspicious occasion I am here to present to you the sweet sakkarai pongal recipe for toddlers and kids.

Significance of Pongal:

Pongal is a harvest and thanks giving festival thanking the sun god, rain and the farm animals that have helped in the harvest.

Pongal in Tamil means “boiling over or spill over.” The moment the rice boils out of the vessel, the tradition is to shout out “Pongal-o-Pongal!” to announce it was going to be a year blessed with good things.

Nowadays in cities pongal is only celebrated one day on January 14, where as in villages it is up to four days namely bhogi, thai pongal, maattu pongal and kaanum pongal.

My Pongal days:

My memories of Pongal festival dates back to my childhood days.

On the pongal day we wear new clothes, decorate home with colourful kolams. My dad used to buy lots of sugarcane. I don’t know how I loved those sugarcanes and it has been ages since I had them. Amma used to prepare sweet pongal with rice, milk, coconut and jaggery in new earthen pots and offer to Sun God. It was a day to feast with my amma’s yummy tummy dishes.

Sweet Pongal or Sakkarai Pongal:

The name of the special dish cooked on this day is called Pongal.

I prepare this sweet pongal every year without fail but not in a traditional way with the earthen pots and other stuffs. But my pongal tastes exactly my amma’s sakkarai pongal 🙂

With all its healthy ingredients, it’s sure a healthy dish for toddlers and kids.

You can also read about home made chikki for toddlers this Sankranthi.

How to make sweet pongal?

Pressure cook washed and cleaned rice and moong dal for 5 to 6 whistles.

In a pan melt jaggery and let it cool down.

In another pan roast cashews and raisins till it turn golden brown in ghee. Mash the rice –dal mixture and add milk to it.

When the milk boils, turn the heat to low, add grated coconut and elaichi. Now add the melted jaggery and cook for 10 minutes. Add ghee and switch off the gas. Garnish with roasted cashew nuts and raisins.

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Sweet ( Sakkarai) Pongal

 

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Author: Jayalekshmy Velswamy

Ingredients

• Raw rice -3/4 cup
• Moong dal-3 tablespoon
• Milk-1/2 cup
• Grated coconut-3 tablespoon (optional)
• Jaggery syrup-3/4 to 1 cup (I used 350 gm jaggery)
• Cashewnuts- 6 to8
• Raisins- a few
• Elachi powder-1/4 tsp
• Ghee- 3 tablespoon

Instructions

1. Wash the rice and moong daal nicely
2. Pressure cook them together with enough water for five to six whistles
3. In the meantime take the jaggery blocks in a pan with little water (say 2-3 tbsp. of water) and put it on flame
4. Allow the jaggery to melt completely, stirring in between
5. Once it melts, filter it and keep aside
6. In a kadai, add 1 tbsp. ghee and roast cashewnuts and raisins till golden brown. Keep it aside
7. Once the rice: daal mixture is cooked, mash it nicely
8. If wanted transfer the mashed rice: daal mixture to another vessel or you can just prepare the pongal in cooker itself
9. Add milk to the mashed rice and allow it to boil
10. Once it starts boils out, keep in low flame, add grated coconut and elachi powder. Mix it well
11. Add jaggery syrup to it and allow it to cook for 5 to 10 minutes
12. Mix nicely avoiding lumps to be formed
13. Add ghee and switch off the flame
14. Garnish with cashewnuts and raisins

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1. Sweet (sakkarai) pongal should be given to toddlers of one year and above as it contains cow’s milk
2. While feeding your baby, remove cashewnuts from the dish
3. If you want the pongal to be watery, you can add more milk or jaggery syrup
4. As the pongal rests, it will thicken
5. Adding grated coconut is completely optional
6. If cooking in pressure cooker add sufficient water (I used nearly 2.5 cups of water for my rice variety)
7. The measurement I used here for this recipe serves two adults and one kid

If you are looking for other festive recipes, you can try whole green gram sundal, thinai halwa, beetroot halwa too.

Serve this sweet pongal to your kid and other members of family and let me know whether your baby liked it.

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Happy Sankranthi!!