Oats and Dates Bajji - Mom's winning recipe

The big day had come again this year. Saffola along with MHP masala and Oriflame conducted their annual "Oats queen contest" on 7th of feb this year.

This time the topic was "Innovative tea time snack" using Saffola oats, Saffola Oil and MHP masala(Masala vada mix/Bajji mix/Adai mix).

The difficulty in creating a dish was when western ingredient oats and these typical Indian masala mixes had to be used together in a dish.

Mom and Me broke our heads and came out with amazingly different dishes. We took more inputs from the family members and came up with 5 successful dishes out of which 4 entered the contest and 2 of them won the titles :)

Yes!! Mom won the first place for her Oats and Dates Bajji and I won the second place for my Betel Oats Manchurian :) It was a proud moment to see mom win the first place and felt really happy when we both won the first two places out of a lot of creative entries :)

Mom is super creative. She came up with a sweet dish with such ingredient combination and it was absolutely delicious and worth the title.

I will be posting all the 5 creative dishes as a series now :) Have a virtual oats treat :)

Oats and dates bajji is a brain child of my mom. She made our favorite kesari with oats and then stuffed them into dates. Isnt it already delicious!! She further dipped it into bajji batter and deep fried it to hide all the fun ingredients.

At the first though or sight, I was not sure how this combination would work out, but surprisingly it was tasting brilliant. Mild salt and spicy outer coating with a sweet and soft bite inside :)

OMG! It was fantastic and no wonder it won the first place :) Hats off to you Mom. I bow down to your skills :)

Ingredients:

Oats - ½ cup
Rava – ½ cup
Sugar – 1 cup
Water – 3 cups
Cardamom – 1
Ghee – 2 tblsp
Food color(orange) – a pinch
Dates - 20
Besan - 1 cup
Rice flour - 1/4 cup
Chilly powder - 1 tsp
Salt - 1 tsp
WaterOil – for frying

Method:

Method for oats kesari:

Powder the oats coarsely.

Boil the water in a pan.

Mix rava, oats, and sugar, add it to the pan when the water boils. Add the food color and keep stirring until it becomes thick.

Finally add ghee and cardamom powder and mix well to make oats kesari and keep it aside.

To make Oats and dates bajji:

Slit the dates neatly and remove the seed. Stuff 1 tsp kesari inside the dates.

Mix besan, rice flour, chilly powder and salt with adequate water and dip the stuffed dates until it is well coated.

Deep fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Enjoy with a cup of coffee.

Variation:

If you want to make a complete sweet version of this bajji -

Option 1:

Mix 1 cup of maida with 1/4 cup of corn flour, 1 tblsp of sugar and a pinch of salt with adequate water to make bajji batter consistency and dip the stuffed dates in it and deep fry until well roasted.

Option 2:

Mix 1/2 cup of besan, 1/2 cup corn flour and a pinch of salt along with adequate water to make bajji batter consistency and dip the stuffed dates in it and deep fry until roast.

Keep checking!! Coming up next is my winning entry - Betel Oats Manchurian!! :)

Written by: Nithya
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