Pressure Cooker Carrot Halwa with Condensed Milk ~ Indian Style Carrot and Condensed Milk Pudding

Your Diwali just got a little sweeter with this creamy, delicious and the most exotic dessert ever – this Carrot Halwa or Gajar ka Halwa, that is made the easy way in a pressure cooker and with condensed milk.

Carrot Halwa – that is something you will find in the menus in most Indian restaurants and is a favorite dessert to be served at many weddings or other parties. Warm carrot halwa / gajar ka halwa paired with cold vanilla ice cream, is the most delicious thing you can eat and can easily put you in a sugar coma.

But like anything, however easy the process of making this, (in terms of what you add, definitely not in terms of the time and effort it takes to make this) I have had my fair share of bad carrot halwas. They taste like the carrots and the milk and sugar have nothing in common in there and they are in an argument with each other or something. Some taste like raw carrots that have been tried to mix with a little milk and sugar.

I can keep going on and on with the list.

{ Disclosure: The links in this post are Amazon afilliate links. If you click through these links and buy, I get a small commission that helps upkeep your favorite blog. This is at no extra cost to you!}

Maybe because of these bad halwas that I have had I take extra care to make carrot halwa with no short cuts ever. Even though I have heard so much about making carrot halwa in a pressure cooker and/or making it with condensed milk, I have somehow never tried making it that way. It was always the long drawn process of just using whole milk and stirring and stirring and more stirring, till the carrot cooks all the way through and the milk thickens and it becomes a nice thick halwa/pudding. All that stirring is still fine, its always grating the carrots that irked me and made me lazy to make this. Quite a lot of biceps workout there with the grating and stirring.

This time around I wanted to see if I still make a delicious gajar ka halwa without all that hard work and took quite a few shortcuts. I used a food processor to grate the carrots instead of grating them manually with a box grater. I used the pressure cooker to cook the carrots and the milk about halfway through and I used condensed milk instead of adding just sugar, so it easily blended with the thickened milk without making it watery all over again. I did not find the taste or the texture to be a whole lot different than if made in the traditional long drawn way. It is just that I knew that it was made the shortcut way.

I know I will still make my carrot halwas in the long drawn way most of the time, because I am a purist when it comes to certain things. But I am glad I have this new foll proof and easy way of making it which still tastes pretty darn good, if I really need to make some really quick.

What I have used to make this recipe:

Pressure Cooker Carrot Halwa with Condensed Milk – The Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups shredded carrots
• 4 cups organic whole milk
• 1 can condensed milk
• 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• a few slivered almonds, for garnish

Method:

Pressure cook the carrots with the whole milk for about 4 whistles / pressure releases, till the carrots are cooked.
Open the pressure cooker once the pressure is released completely and keep cooking the carrots in the milk on medium high heat, till all of the milk is absorbed by the carrots.
Now add the condensed milk and keep cooking till the condensed milk also gets absorbed. It is important to keep stirring, almost continuously throughout this, so as to not get the carrots burnt or stuck to the bottom.
Add the cardamom and mix well.
Garnish with the almonds and serve warm.

Note:

The number of whistles for a pressure cooker varies from brand to brand and also the size of the cooker. The pressure cooker I have takes about 5-6 whistles to cook moong dal - just as a point of reference.
You can add more sugar before adding cardamom, if you want it more sweet. Just remember to cook it further till all the sugar melts and then gets added back to the halwa again.