Gajar Halwa Base
Carrot halwa is an Indian sweet or mithai made with carrots, whole milk, ghee, sugar and flavored with cardamom and garnished with nuts. Two most popular halwa are carrot or dudhi halwa. Now add Carrot halwa to your list. It's creamy and decadent dessert.
Servings: 1 batch for cake
Ingredients
- 3 tbsp ghee
- 3-4 tbsp cashews sultanas or raisins, almond, pistachios
- 1 ½ -2 cups carrots grated
- 1 cup Whole milk
- 1/3- 1/2 cup Sugar
- ½ tsp cardamom powder
- ¼ cup milk powder
- Optional – rose petals saffron, edible silver leaf
Instructions
- Wash the carrots very well with water. Grate them using a grater or you can also use food processor. Hand grated is better for texture. Use larger holes of the grater.
- Heat up ghee in a heavy bottom pan on medium temperature. Once the ghee is slightly hot quickly stir the dry fruits and remove them. You just want to get them to brown a little bit. Do not burn them. Leave them aside.
- In same ghee, add grated carrots and keep stirring until all the moisture has evaporated or gone from the carrots. Once the moisture is gone, add the milk and keep cooking until the mix is thickened. Keep stirring in between, do no leave it unattended.
- Once the milk has reduced, add in the sugar, cardamom powder and milk powder again keep stirring. Sugar will release some water, so it needs to be cooked further until the mixture is thickened and starts leaving the sides of the pan. You will also observe the ghee being released on the sides of the pan.
- Once the extra liquid has evaporated. Anyways it will be baked further.
- Mix in the cardamom powder, and ghee roasted nuts. Leave some nuts to garnish if you like. Optionally you can garnish the halwa with some dried rose petals, gold or silver leaf.
- Let the halwa cool down completely before adding it to the cake batter.
Notes
- The amount of sweetness can be adjusted. Taste it once sugar has dissolved, to add more sugar.
• It stays well in the fridge for few days and can easily be frozen few a month.