
Carrot Halwa is a delicious dessert. My grandmother used to make it for me, and I remember how she was able to get the rich mixture of carrots, nuts and milk just right. It is rich and heavy. But just a warning, this tasty Indian sweet is quite fattening.
It can be made with regular butter, but I prefer to make it with my Fragrant Ghee. Ghee just makes the taste that much more intense.
Many people garnish it with nuts and raisins as well. I suggest that if you do that, you do so sparingly as you do not want the taste to overpower this dessert. Just sprinkle a few nuts and raisins over it before you serve.
Ingredients:
- 2kg carrots
- 160g cashews, ground
- 1tsp cardamom
- Pinch of saffron
- 3 litres milk
- 800g sugar
- 4tbsp ghee
Preparation Method:
- Peel the carrots.
- Grate the carrots and leave them in a small bowl. Set the bowl aside.
- Heat just 3 tablespoons of ghee in a deep pan on high heat.
- Crush the cashews. You can do this with a mortar and pestle, or you can just put the cashews in a ziplock bag and pound on them with the bottom of a pot.
- Lower the heat and put the crushed cashews into the pan and lightly roast them. They should turn light golden brown.
- Remove the cashews and set them aside.
- Add another tablespoon of ghee.
- Add the grated carrots and stir slowly.
- Sprinkle in the cardamom and saffron and stir for 3 minutes.
- Now pour in the milk. You can use skim milk to make the Carrot Halwa less fattening.
- Raise the heat and bring the milk to the boil.
- Once it has boiled, lower the flame and stir slowly.
- Cover the pot and lower the flame a bit more. Leave this to simmer for about 1 hour. Do not forget to check on it every so often and stir. After some time simmering, the ghee will start to ooze out, and it will become nice and thick.
- Finally add the sugar and stir well.
- Cook for another 10 minutes.
- It is now ready to serve.
Makes: 1 large Carrot Halwa
Takes: 2 hours
Note: Although it isn’t an Indian dish, I also recommend this carrot cake recipe. What better way to eat your veggies than adding them to a dessert?
Tags: cardamom, Carrot Halwa, carrots, cashews, ghee, Indian food, milk, saffron, sugar
This entry was posted on Monday, 9 April, 2012 at 11:22 am by Jay Ahmed and is filed under Desserts.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the feed RSS 2.0.
You can leave a comment, or make a trackback from your own blog.
Desserts with veggies – nothing better to take away some of the guilt.
[…] Although it’s only vegetables, this dish can be quite heavy. For a lighter cheesy recipe to “fool” kids into eating their veggies, try this baked fennel with tomato gratin. For dessert, I recommend this carrot halwa. […]