Kerala’s very own sweet. Quintessential Kerala ingredients; rice, coconut, and jaggery; are used to make this unassuming sweet.

Popping an ari unda into your mouth after a meal can be an utterly satisfying experience and the best part is that you can do so without feeling sinful or guilty. It is a very healthy sweet since it is devoid of oil, ghee, or sugar. It is a very good gifting option also as it has good shelf life and can be enjoyed by all age groups.

Ingredients:
Parboiled rice – 1 cup
Broken wheat grains – 1 cup
Whole green mung beans – 1 cup
Jaggery – 3 cups (Same amount as the grains used)
Grated coconut – 2 cups
Dry ginger – ½ tsp/half inch
Elaichi/cardamom – 8 to 10 pods

Method:
In a thick iron wok, dry roast the grains (rice, wheat, and mung beans) separately until they change color and start giving out a wonderful aroma. In case of rice and wheat, they will start to pop. Green mung turns brown. Rice and wheat takes roughly 7-10 minutes of roasting time each in medium fire. Remove from fire and allow the roasted ingredients to cool down.

Grate coconut and powder the jaggery. In a mixer, grind the roasted rice into a coarse powder. If you are using whole dry ginger, powder it along with the grains. Add the elaichi pods along with the rice while grinding.

After you finish powdering the roasted ingredients, add jaggery, grated coconut into the mixer jar and powder them. Add some of the roasted rice/what powder into this so that they blend well. This also helps in grinding the jaggery and coconut well. Remove from the mixer jar and mix the powdered rice, jaggery, and grated coconut well in a deep vessel. The moisture from jaggery and grated coconut moistens the dry roasted ingredients. If you are using dry ginger powder, add it now. Using dry ginger adds a nice flavor and aids digestion.

Make balls out of this mixture. The shelf life is about a week due to the addition of freshly grated coconut and raw jaggery powder.

However, you can refrigerate this for up to 15-20 days. Another version that is made traditionally in my house involves mixing the roasted and powdered rice with jaggery syrup. This version uses copra instead of grated coconut and hence has a good shelf life of 2-3 weeks. The only downside to this version is that due to the use of jaggery syrup, depending on the consistency of the syrup the laddus harden and breaking them with your teeth can be quite a task!

Notes: 

1. I normally use broken wheat instead of whole wheat because it is easier to grind in home mixer grinders that are not very heavy duty. You may use whole wheat grains as well.
2. Some jaggery varieties are not moist enough to hold together and firm up the laddus. In such cases, you will need to use jaggery syrup instead of powdered jaggery for the laddus. Make jaggery syrup by adding a cup of water to the jaggery and heating it. When the jaggery is diluted, strain it to remove impurities. Then, boil the strained jaggery syrup to a string consistency. Turn off the heat. Add small quantities of this syrup to the mixture of powdered grains and coconut/roasted copra. Add enough to moisten the powder and then use your palm to shape into laddus. You can roll the shaped laddu on some dry powder to firm it up a little bit. Make sure that the jaggery syrup that you add to the powder is warm enough. For this, you may have to reheat the syrup depending on the time you take to shape the laddus. But you cant keep the syrup on flame all the while that you are making the laddu because that will make it too thick and sticky.