Peanut Chikki - Peanut Brittle

Making chikki was not a conscious decision. It all started when we were planning to visit my uncle for the first time and I wanted to take something special for him. After roaming around the shops hunting for the perfect gift for days, I still couldn't find anything special enough. Thats when I thought of edible gifts. Chikki  seemed perfect to pack and carry around and what more, its simple and straight forward to make!

The only difficult part in making chikki is melting the sugar, which requires a good amount of patience to get it right, without burning it. Chikki can be made with jaggery or brown sugar in which case it will require more time to melt.

Ingredients:
1 cup - coarsely ground peanuts
1 cup - sugar
2-3 tablespoons - Ghee, or melted butter , this is to help in cutting the chikki and is also used to grease the dishes to avoid the chikki from sticking to them.

Method:
Put 2 tablespoons of ghee and the sugar  into a pan and set the pan on low to medium heat on the stove. If it is the first time you are doing this, it would be advisable to put it on low heat and wait patiently for it to melt, as it is very easy to burn the sugar if heated on a higher flame. Never try this on a high flame else the sugar will burn and give a bitter taste to the chikki.
Once the sugar has started melting, it will start to form translucent clumps. Keep stiring the sugar constantly until all of the sugar has melted and formed a beautiful amber colour sticky liquid.
At this point we can add in the peanuts . Before adding the peanuts raise the heat  because once the peanuts are added the sugar can crystalize around the peanuts and you will not get the required consistency.
Pour out the well mixed sugar and peanut mixture out on a greased pan and flatten it out. You can also use a greased rolling pin to leavel out the mixture. If you like cutting the chikkis into perfect squares, you can do that at this point with a greased knife. Make sure that you pour the mixutre and roll it out before it cools. Once cool it solidifies quickly.

Once it is cool you can break it into small chunks with ur hands if you have not cut it into sqares already.

I bought a nice jar to pack these chikkis in and my uncle loved the gift :)