Chikki is a traditional Indian sweet generally made from groundnuts (peanuts) and jaggery. There are several different varieties of chikki in addition to the most common groundnut chikki. Each variety of chikki is named depending upon the ingredients used, which include puffed or roasted Bengal gram, sesame, puffed rice, beaten rice, or Khobara (desiccated coconut).
In regions of North India, especially Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, this sweet is called Layyiya Patti. In Sindhi (Sindh and India)it is called Layee or Lai .Similar dishes are also very popular in Brazil, where it is known as pé-de-moleque, and in Paraguay, where it is called Ka'à Ladrillo.
Some chikkis are made using a combination of these ingredients. Special chikkis are made out of cashews, almonds, and pistachios. Though jaggery is the usual sweetener material, sugar is used as the base in certain types of chikkis. It is a very popular sweet item in both rural and urban South Asia (spanning India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka). Some also add glucose to the chikkis, which are usual there. It just started from a single flavor of jaggery and peanuts. But today there are many different exotic flavors available in the market.
The origins of the preparations is in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu with a larger proportion of nuts to jaggery and the mixture is formed into balls rather than slabs. The most common versions are kadalai urundai (peanut balls), ellu urundai (sesame balls) and pori urundai (puffed rice balls). In Kerala, it is made in both slab and ball forms. Peanut based sweet is called as kappalandi mithai and sesame based sweet is called as ellunda.
The preparation of chikkis is very simple and consists of first preparing the hot jaggery syrup with a minimum of water, adding nuts to the syrup to coat them (with the syrup) and then transferring the nuts to a wooden mould, then rolling them to a thickness of about 6–8 mm using a wooden roller/and we also place in to the any steel plate for cooling, cutting into slabs and packing. In homes, smaller quantities are hand rolled with wooden rollers.
...
Wikipedia
