Wheat Halwa

This is a typical Diwali treat at my place and my mom- in- law's signature dish. Just tried this out today. I like this home made version better than store bought ones. Its incredibly tasty and a melt in your mouth treat. It requires a bit of work but worth the effort. So do check out the recipe.

Ingredients

Samba Wheat grains -1 glass( 250 gms approximately)

Sugar-2 1/4 cup ( u can increase if you want it sweeter)

Cardamom pods -10 which were powdered

Cashews-A handful broken

Ghee-10 tablespoons(150 ml approximately)

Soak wheat grains overnight. I added 3 glasses of water to immerse the wheat grains.

Put the wheat grains in a mixer and grind . To extract the milk grind the wheat with one glass of water and extract the milk. The first extract will be thick, the last extract will be watery. I did this procedure thrice. Discard the glutinous mass of wheat. Use a sieve to filter the milk.

The filtered wheat milk will look like this.  If you keep this aside, the milk will remain at the bottom and the water will remain on top. I did not discard the water because the wheat milk will coagulate fast and might get charred if not careful.

Now prepare the sugar syrup. Take sugar in a pan add 3/4 cup of water to the sugar. Start stirring it. Take a little bit of milk and add it to the sugar syrup to remove the scum. You can see the scum in the picture above.

Stir this mixture till it attains a single string consistency. You can check the consistency with your finger.

 The wheat milk has been added to the sugar syrup. Stir this well till it forms a mass. 

Take a little bit of color and add this to the mixture. After this you will have to add cardamom and cashew nuts. You have to keep stirring the mixture well and cannot leave it unattended. You have to keep adding ghee, as you are stirring in stages as it forms a mass.

You can see the I have added the cardamom powder,cashew nuts and ghee and the mixture is forming into mass. The main difficulty in making this sweet is stirring. I had to stir this for 45 minutes.Its better to stir this on a low flame to prevent it from getting charred. This is important if you want to make pieces.

Please check this consistency,  the whole mixture has formed a ball.

Grease a plate with ghee. Put the whole mixture on to a plate. Let it cool. Cut into desired shapes.

Cut into desired shapes. I cut them up into a diamond shape. This was not cloyingly sweet but just right. If you like it sweeter please add more sugar. I got 40 pieces for one glass of wheat.

Sending this to Diwali Special Sweets & Savories 

&

Global Food Festival by Kalyani

Sweet and Savoury Diwali Moments



Diwali Marundhu,Mysore Pak,Wheat halwa and Rava Ladoo

 

Thenkuzhal,Mullu thenkuzhal and Omapodi




Brinjal,Chow Chow,Potato and Raw Plantain waiting to sizzle our palate. 



Diwali at our place is really big on food.These are some of the moments that made Diwali great for us. This was at my Mil's place.Our festivities started on the 4th evening with bhaji and wheat halwa and the rest of the bakshanam pictured on top .This was followed by a simple dinner of semiya payasam,onion sambar and potato curry.Check out the collages.This was our Pre-Diwali treat! I'm sending this to the key bunch fest.

Making of Mysore Pak.My mom in her own words.

Melt in the mouth barfi type Mysore Pak

Proportions:
Gram Flour: 1: Sugar 2: Ghee 3 (Aavin or Udhayam)

The importance of using Asli desi Ghee in Mysore Pak

Sorry health conscious people.If you want to get a nice texture of Mysore pak,you can't resist the use of ghee.You have to use ghee in the proportion of 3 cups to 1 of besan and 2 cups of sugar.If you have any health problem no other go, you have to keep away from eating the delicious Mysore Pak.

How this sweet was named

Since this sweet was prepared in the royal kitchen of Mysore Maharaja,this was the name it acquired.

Making of the barfi like Mysore Pak!

1)Heat half cup of ghee and add one cup of besan in the frying pan.(generally iron kadai is preferred).If you don't have one use you can use Calcutta frying pan or any other pan which is thick bottomed.

2) Mix the flour with out any lumps.

3) In the meantime time add 2 cups of sugar, add water to immerse the sugar.Boil till you get a two string consistency.

4) Now add the besan mixture which is mixed with ghee.


5) Keep the fire very low in sim condition.

6) You must keep remaining ghee in another vessel on the stove in a heated condition.

sinful ghee laden in progress mixture

7) Keep stirring the besan sugar mixture,periodically adding the heated ghee side by side.

8) Keep stirring the mixture till you can see the mixture starts leaving the side of the vessel.The ghee will ooze out of the Mysore pak mixture.If you take a pinch of it you can roll it into a small ball.This is the correct stage where you can transfer the contents.

9)Pour the contents into a plate which is smeared with ghee.The plate should be of even surface.

10) Then you can mark the pieces into squares.Once it cools down you can store it in an airtight container.

Tip: 

The end point is very important in making this sweet.You should not leave the place to attend any call.Even if you are a little careless you won't get soft consistency of the Mysore pak.

Best of luck to get smooth barfi type of Mysore pak and enjoy with family and friends.

Seriously my mom's Mysore pak was a big hit with everybody. I really loved this sweet Diwali moment.This is a tried and tested recipe.Please do try this recipe and let me know.My mom got a lot of wows from visiting family and friends.

I'm sharing this with Key Bunch & Emreen and Sugar Bananas