Kaju Katli: Why It's a Diamond, and How It's Made

Open almost any Diwali box and it's sitting there in a corner: a thin, pale diamond, sometimes with a silver shine on top. Kaju katli. Nobody argues about it, nobody leaves it behind, and it's usually the first piece to go.

If the criss-cross pattern all over this website looks familiar, that's not an accident. It's the kaju katli diamond. When our shop on 100 Ft Road, Ballabgarh got its new look, this was the pattern we picked, because no sweet says "mithai ka dabba" quite like it.

What kaju katli actually is

The name tells you most of it. Kaju is cashew. Katli means a thin slice. So: thin slices of cashew sweet.

The making is simple to describe and hard to get right. Cashews are ground fine, sugar is boiled into a syrup until it reaches a single thread (dip two fingers in, pull them apart, and one thread forms), and the two are cooked together into a smooth dough. That dough is rolled out thin and flat, left to set, and cut.

Ours is exactly that: cashew and sugar, cooked thin and cut into diamonds. Some halwais add ghee or a little kesar, and many finish the pieces with a sheet of edible silver varq. Underneath any of that, though, it's the same two ingredients doing all the work. Which is why there's nowhere for a bad batch to hide.

Where it came from

Here's a fun fact to bring up at the next family function: cashews aren't Indian at all. The tree is from South America, and the Portuguese brought it to Goa in the 1560s. So kaju katli can't be older than that.

After that, history gives you two stories, and honestly, neither comes with paperwork.

• The Maratha story. A cook named Bhimrao, in a 16th-century Maratha kitchen, took an almond sweet and swapped the almonds for cashews.
• The Mughal story. In 1619, when Guru Hargobind was released from Gwalior Fort around Diwali, a royal cook made a new sweet of cashew, sugar and ghee to mark the day.

Pick whichever one you like better. Both end the same way, with kaju katli on the table at Diwali, which is where it has stayed ever since.

So why a diamond?

Nobody wrote it down. You'll hear romantic stories, but the practical answer is simple, and anyone who has cut a tray of it will give it to you:

• Two sets of straight cuts. Run the knife one way across the sheet, then at an angle the other way. Every piece comes out the same size, fast.
• Every piece gets the same thin edge. A diamond has no thick middle. Each bite is the same texture as the last.
• They pack flat. Diamonds sit side by side in a box with almost no gaps, so nothing slides around on the way to your relatives.
• It just looks like a festival. A tray of diamonds catches the light. A tray of squares looks like barfi.

How to tell a good piece

A few things worth checking at any mithai counter, ours included:

• Thin and even. Thick, uneven pieces usually mean the sheet was rushed.
• Smooth when you bite. It should melt, not crunch. Graininess means the cashew wasn't ground fine enough or the sugar crystallised.
• A little give. It should bend slightly before it breaks. Rubbery means overcooked, crumbly means undercooked.
• It tastes of kaju. If all you get is sugar, the cashew is too little or not fresh.
• A dry surface. An oily or sticky top means it has been sitting in the heat.

Why everyone gifts it

Kaju katli is the safe bet of the mithai world, and we mean that kindly. It isn't syrupy or milky, so it travels without leaking. It stacks flat in a box. Kids like it, nanaji likes it, the neighbour who "doesn't eat sweets" likes it. Jab samajh na aaye kya le jaayein, kaju katli le jao.

If it's going as a gift, pack it in one of our Bhent gift boxes, or mix it with a few from the rest of the Kaju Special range.