Carrot Halwa / Gajorer Halwa

Carrot Halwa or Gajar Ka Halwa is an Indian dessert made of carrots, ghee, green cardamoms, evaporated milk, sugar and cashew nuts. Its bright orange colour and the creamy and a little coarse texture from the evaporated milk and khoya is just amazing. We like our gajar ka halwa hot, just out of the kadai with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. If you haven’t tried it till now...I am encouraging you to have carrot halwa in that way. I am sure you must have eaten ice cream with hot gulab jamun and relished every moment of it...and you are going to like this one even more or so. Top it with lots of cashews, almonds, raisins and pistachios and you are good to go.

Carrot Halwa / Gajorer Halwa

Serves 4

Ingredients:

500gm carrot

2 and ½ cups of white granulated sugar

4 green cardamoms

3 tbsp pure desi ghee

A pinch of saffron strands

2 litres of milk / 2 cups of evaporated milk

½ cup of khoya – grated

A handful of cashew nuts / halved

Method:

Peel and grate the carrots. Keep aside.

Dry roast the green cardamoms and peel off their skin. Take out the seeds and grind them into a powder. Keep aside.

Pour the milk in a heavy bottomed dutch oven and simmer the milk for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the milk is reduced to 1/3 of its orininal quantity. When the milk is reduces, switch off the flame and keep the pot of milk aside.

Heat oil and shallow fry the cashew nuts until lightly brown. As soon as they change their colour take them out of the ghee and keep aside.

Add the grated carrot to the ghee and start stirring the carrots, until the raw flavour of the carrot goes away. It will take a while and the carrots will look paler when they are cooked.

Now add the reduced milk / evaporated milk to the carrots and simmer on low to medium flame until all the moisture is evaporated.

Add sugar, green cardamom powder, saffron strands and fried cashew nuts and mix them well.

Simmer for another 7-10 minutes until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Finally stir in the grated khoya and drizzle some more ghee if you want.

Serve immediately with some vanilla ice cream or chill it for 4 hours before serving.