Walnut Burfi in memory of Nitai

Here is the recipe for a tasty short-cut Burfi, or Indian fudge, which I had the service of making this year at Burning Man in honor of the late Nitai Das (Elisha Drury - pictured above), founder of our Krishna Kitchen. 

The ingredients for this Burfi were sponsored by Carmen Ordonez, Nitai's loving Mom. Thank you! :-) I tweaked a Burfi recipe I'd been given til I liked it e.g. adding more liquid and more flavor.

 The original recipe also called for raisins - which we didnt have - so I made it with sweetened cranberries instead a couple of times.  I would prefer to make this with brown sugar, or an alternative, more healthy sweetener, but for this particular event I had to work with the ingredients I had at hand. It tastes alot like white chocolate! :-)

This recipe makes a very big tray full of Burfi, you would get at least 50-70 pieces out of this depending on what size you cut the squares into. Takes approx 20 minutes to make from beginning to end. So here goes!

Ingredients:

5 cups melted butter

10 cups white sugar (you could reduce the sugar by a cup or so if you prefer it less sweet)

2 3/4 - 3 cups whole milk

Approx 3 TBSP vanilla essence

10 cups whole milk powder

Approx 21/2 cups roughly crushed walnuts

Alternative flavors I made included; 

orange essence, walnut and cranberry

orange essence, lemon zest, walnut and chocolate chip

Method:

Place butter into a heavy bottomed wide pot and turn to medium heat. Beat sugar into butter and bring to a full boil. Boil for approx 4 mins til very lightly golden = so it becomes somewhat caramelized. 

Add in milk and vanilla essence and boil til sugar is dissolved.

Lower heat, and whisk in the milk powder, beating out any lumps. Add in walnuts, and cook for a few more minutes, stirring constantly so it doesn't burn.

Pour onto a buttered baking sheet/tray and smooth out with a spatula. Allow to cool. It is easiest to cut into squares or rectangles before it is fully hardened. You can chill it to speed up the process. Offer to Krishna and serve when fully cooled and set. Delicious! :-)

We wrapped the squares in aluminium foil for distribution, as gifts from our Krishna Kitchen to our fellow Burners, along with a small mantra meditation and ingredient card, designed by our friend Nandi Coupal, wife of our awesome head chef this year - Nate.  

We got plenty of rave reviews and people asking for seconds and thirds of this sweet treat! :-)