Pista Barfi Recipe with Gulkand

To make pistachio powder:

1. First, roast the pistachio on very slow heat for 15 minutes. Roasting should not change the color of the pistachio, but just heat them up. Roasting makes it easier to make powder, without releasing the oil while grinding. 
2. Now let them cool down before grounding them into powder. 
3. Once cool, you can use you can use Nutri Bullet or any other grinder to grind them. Just make sure not to overload the grinder. Do in small batches. Pulse it. Do not run the grinder for long times. 
4. Lastly sieve the powder to remove any unground or big pieces of pistachio. You may grind these again. 

Stuffing preparation:

1. Take gulkand in a mixing bowl and add finely chopped cashews, almonds, pistachios, crushed fennel seeds, shredded coconut, and cardamom powder.
2. Mix it well and keep it aside.  

Pista Barfi recipe:

1. In this whole process heat should be medium low. Take a non-stick pan and heat it up. 
2. Add sugar and water to make a single string sugar syrup.
3. When all the sugar is dissolved in water, add 2 tablespoon of milk in the syrup to remove all the gunk from the syrup. The milk will form the scum on top of the syrup, remove it with help of a small strainer. 
4. To check if the sugar syrup is ready put a small drop on your four finger and thumb and pull the finger apart to check if the string forms between your fingers. 
5. Don’t burn yourself as syrup will be hot. You need to act fast because the consistency of syrup changes really quickly. If the suga syrupcy changes to more thickerconsistency then your barfi will be really chewy. To bring back the right consistensy of sugar syrup add one or two tablespoon of water.
6. When the syrup is ready, first add cardamom powder and then pistachio powder in it. Quickly mix together in the syrup. If the whole thing is not coming together, you might need to add a little bit of milk to help in getting everything together. 
7. Keep mixing until the mixture starts leaving the pan. once the mixture start leaving the pan add 1 teaspoon of ghee and mix to glaze the mixture. 
8. Remove the mixture from the pan and put it on the parchment sheet.
9. Keep kneading the dough with spatula to bring it together as a dough. 
10. The next step is to flatten out the dough. there are two ways to achieve that. You can simply use the spatula to flatten it or you can either roll it with a rolling pin. If you decide to use the rolling pin, first put the parchment paper on the top to make sure that mixture does no stick to the rolling pin. 
11. You will need two flat sheets to make a sandwich with gulkand in between them. So you can either make two flats or divide a single flat in two parts. 
12. Spread the gulkand over one of the flattened sheet barfi dough and the put the other flattened barfi layer on the top to make a sandwich. Use the parchment paper to help you lift the other layer and flip it over the spread. 
13. Put another parchment sheet on the top and roll it with a rolling pin lightly to bond the three layers together. 
14. Now, remove the parchment sheet and cut it into your desired shape. Note, before making a final cut, make some guiding grid, to make sure all your pieces look similar in size and shape. 

For Decoration:

For decoration, you can either put silver foil on the top to bring out the rich look of the barfi, spread some dry pistachios on the top, use dry rose petals or do combination of any of them. Since the festive season is going on, I used silver foils.