The Perfect Peanut Chiki (peanut brittle)

Sometime back I posted a recipe for peanut brittle and emphasized on what place the chiki holds in our house. Given that it should come as no surprise that we’ve finally mastered the recipe for peanut chiki!
At home, we’ve always made chiki with just jaggery and peanuts. The problem with jaggery is that it doesn’t has the crunch that professionally made chiki does. After making the peanut brittle I realized that if I were to merge the traditional recipe with the one for the brittle, I might end up with what I’m looking for.
The credit for this recipe really goes to my DH because he was the executioner and the decision-maker. I just planted the seed for the recipe. I wish I could post an audio of the crunch when you bite into the chiki – it’s drool worthy!

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup jaggery
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1 cups 1.5 cups crushed peanuts

Method:

1. Roast the peanuts: You can use the oven or do it the microwave way as I did here. Since my oven was already preheated I piggy-backed on it.
• Preheat the oven to 500F. Then turn it off.
• Spread the raw peanuts in a single layer on a baking sheet.
• Keep checking after every 5 minutes.
2. Shell the peanuts. We just did it by hand by rubbing them against each other.
3. Crush the peanuts in a food processor. Lightly crush them, as you can see in the photo, most of the peanuts are almost halved.
4. Heat the oven to 200F and keep a parchment paper lined baking sheet inside.
5. Add everything except the peanuts to a utensil and heat it at medium heat.
6. Stir often and heat till the mixture comes to a rolling bowl.
7. Let it boil a few seconds. Do the candy test (look at Note below for how to do the candy test) and then add the peanuts.
8. CAUTION: the moment you mix the peanuts in, the mixture will come together. So you’ve to be quick.
9. Get your baking sheet out and spread the mixture on it.
10. Grease the bottom of a flat-bottomed bowl with ghee and use it to thump down the mixture into a layer.
11. Make indentations using a knife so that once the chiki hardens it would be easier to break it up.
12. Let it cool around 10-20 minutes.
13. The most delicious chiki is ready!!

Note:

Candy test: Take cold water (from the fridge) in a small bowl and add a drop of the boiling liquid to it. Wait 20-30 seconds. If the drop of liquid forms a hard candy after that then you're ready. Otherwise keep stirring and boiling.