Su's Recipes: Gajar ka Halwa

gajar ka halwa, carrot pudding, carrot halwa, how to make traditional carrot halwa

Gajar ka Halwa is an authentic sweet dish, which is cooked from centuries across India. Though this dish claims to be a North-Indian dish, today its prepared all over the country. Gajar ka Halwa is desert with creamy flavor and beautiful texture; so its favorite among many, especially kids. Milk is added to grated carrots and cooked together; until it forms the lip-smacking creamy flavor into this dish. The whole process of cooking this dish takes little more time then usual; but at the end its worthwhile to get the best ever taste for your sweet tooth.

Carrots, the versatile vegetable, can be cooked in a variety of ways. Be it a simple salad or juice to a stir fry, curry, pickle or a dessert. Carrots are also cooked as an excellent starter. As I blog, will come out with a delicious starter with this super vegetable. Considering its nutritive value, one must include this vegetable in their everyday's diet. Though we associate this root vegetable with the color orange, carrots are actually found in different colors too, like red, purple, white and yellow. All round the year in India, we get to see the orange color one but during winters, usually comes the red color carrots, which has different nutritional benefits, as well provides a nice color texture to the dishes like Gajar ka Halwa and Carrot Kheer, to name a few. Next time you come across this red carrots, grab it, cook, and indulge in this dessert sinfully, which not only tastes fab, looks elegant too........!!!

carrots, sweets, indian sweets, punjabi dessert, festival sweets

Ingredients:

1. Red Carrots - 1 Kg

2. Milk - 750 ml to 1 litre (better to use full cream milk)

3. Sugar - 1/2 cup to 3/4th cup.

4. Nuts - Almonds and cashews few

5. Ghee - 1 tsp.

Cooking Method:

1. Soak the almonds in water for at least 4 hours for later use for garnishing.

2. Peel, clean and grate the carrots with the grater. Bring the milk to boil in a thick bottomed pan and drop these grated carrots and allow to cook until all the milk gets absorbed and the grated carrots are cooked to soft. This will take quiet some time.

3. Once the milk gets absorbed immediately add sugar and allow to cook until its well incorporated and gets dry.

4. Finally, in another pan add ghee, toss the cashews and add to the Halwa giving it a thorough mix. This step is purely optional since the nuts can be chopped and added raw too.

5. And finally for garnishing, peel the outer skin of the soaked almonds and chop it finely lengthwise and add to the Gajar ka Halwa.

Note:

1. The cream collected at home (may be 2 to 3 days old) can be added to make it more rich.

2. Ghee in the recipe is purely for tossing of nuts as oil in cream is sufficient to cook this dessert to perfection.

3. Can add less sugar too to this dessert taking into consideration the sweet feature of the vegetable and milk cream.

4. Poppy seeds/Khus Khus can be dry roasted and added to the Gajar ka Halwa. Not only it adds flavor to the dish but gives the slight crunchiness in this sweet dish.