Carrot Halwa

Last week was like Food Festival at our home. We cooked special food each and every day due to my brother in law's visit. I think we need to fast this week to compensate last week's high calorie diet. How could I call it a food festival without any sweet treats. I prepared Carrot Halwa one of our favorite sweet. I'm not a big sweet lover but I just like some of the homemade ones. This one is my Mom's specialty. I just remember the days when I was back from school, I would smell the aroma of the ghee and carrots in air when I'm inside my block. I would run upstairs and ask my Mom whether she prepared the halwa and she would say no, may be the aroma is from the neighbor's house. I would not believe her and I would pull a chair and check all the shelves and finally jump out of joy when I find it. She prepares it so well, I used to finish my quota very soon and pester her for more..

Carrot Halwa is a wonderful blend of carrots, milk and sugar, flavored with the exotic cardamom and garnished with the roasted cashews. It is a simple dessert which is a good party recipe. My mom used to spend a lot time in grating carrots but now we can use our food processor and it hardly took 2 minutes. It can be served both warm and cold. I love it both the ways. This is a must try dessert. Just Cook Eat and Enjoy !!!

Ingredients

Grated Carrots - 4 cups
Milk - 3 cups
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Ghee - 4 tbsp
Cardamom pods - 4 - 5 no
Cashews - 8 - 10 no

Preparation

• Heat 1/2 tsp ghee and fry the cashews until golden brown and keep aside for garnishing.
• Grind the cardamom seeds with little sugar into a coarse powder.

Method

• Heat ghee in a non stick pan and add the grated carrots to it.
• Saute the carrot for about 10 minutes until it is tender and has changed color.
• Meanwhile in a heavy bottomed pan boil the milk until for about 10 minutes. Stir the milk often so that it does not gets burnt.
• Add the milk to the carrot and cook in medium flame until all the milk is dried up. It might take about 10 minutes.
• Add the sugar to the cooked carrot mixture and mix well.
• Saute continuously until the halwa starts to leave the edges of the pan and starts to roll.
• Garnish with the fried cashews.

My Notes

• Adjust the sugar level according to your taste.
• You can use other garnishing like golden raisins to make it more richer.
• Keep an eye on the flame and continuously saute the contents else it might get burnt.