Panchakajjaya is a very simple delicious mixture of five ingredients. They are ghee, coconut, sesame seeds, jaggery and dals (lentils ). Most of the GSB households prepare this during Ganesh Chaturthi, Krishna Janmastami and also it is served as Naivedyam (Prasad ) to devotees in temples. There are two types of panchakajjaya , one is a powdered type and the other is what I made today.

Before preparing  Panchakajjaya let us learn how to prepare jaggery syrup. Prepared jaggery syrup is easy to use for many items such as churnu for Nevri, Paan patholi, godu phovu and payasam.

How to prepare Jaggery Syrup: Boil jaggery with little water in a pressure cooker up to one whistle. Switch off the flame. Allow it to cool and open the lid to see if the jaggery has dissolved, now add more water and strain it and boil it again till it becomes a thick honey like consistency. Let it cool and you can store this syrup in a refrigerator for up to a month or so.

   Jaggery syrup.

Ingredients for Panchakajjaya : 

• Grated coconut – 4 cups.
• Jaggery Syrup – 4 cups.
• Bengal gram / chana dal (split chickpeas) – 1/2 cup.
• Green gram (Moong) dal – 1/2 cup.
• Puffed rice paddy  ( layi in Konkani ) – 1/2 cup.
• Black sesame seeds ( Thil ) -1/4 cup.
• Melted Ghee- 1 tbsp.
• Cardamom powder – 1 tsp.

 Method :

• Clean moong dal, chana dal, sesame seeds and puffed paddy.
• Dry roast chana dal and moong dal one by one in a pan on a slow flame, continuously stirring until it is golden brown and fragrant.
• Allow roasted dals to cool and grind separately in a mixer grinder, coarsely. Do not grind it to a fine powder you need it just lightly broken.
• In the same pan dry roast sesame seeds until it starts to splutter.
• Coarsely powder the puffed rice paddy.
• Now in a big pan cook coconut and jaggery syrup on a medium flame for a few more minutes, don’t make it too dry and switch off the flame just before it dries up. It has to finally look like this. This is called churnu in Konkani.

        Churnu

• This is  the base of this dish. Allow it to cool.
• Now add crushed dals moong and chana, puffed paddy powder, sesame seeds, cardamon powder and melted ghee. Mix it well.
• Now Panchakajjaya is ready for Naivedyam.

Note : You can make panchakajjaya with either one chana or moong dal , add one cup dal instead of half cup in this case.

You can also prepare this without puffed rice. It is optional .