Sooji Halwa–Sweet Semolina Pudding

Quick and easy, ready in under 30 minutes. Sooji Halwa / Sweet Semolina Pudding is something you need to put on your Diwali sweets list for this year!

Accidental deliciousness. It’s a term I have coined. For all those “accidents” you have in the kitchen and it turns out wonderfully delicious. Yes, the not so good kind of accidents happen too. But lets just pretend that they don’t happen to us.

This Sooji halwa is a result of one such accident. I was making Khoya Peda, something I used to make every Diwali up until a few years ago. I had forgotten the exact recipe and I wanted to try and make it again. I remembered it to be simple enough. Only thing I forgot was that you don’t use any water or any other form of liquid, or else the khoya would become looser in consistency and wont hold up to be pedas.

Khoya is a block of dried milk solids, that is usually unsweetened. You can easily find it along side paneer at your local Indian grocery store.

I wanted to add saffron to the pedas, so I mixed some saffron in a tablespoon of warm milk and poured it into the khoya mixture. It made it all watery and it lost all its cnsistency that I knew I will not be able to make it into pedas, unless I worked on it for a really long time to make it all thickened up again and I absolutely did not have have patience for that.

I quickly cooked some semolina, just the way you would for kesari and mixed it into the khoya mixture. It became a wonderfully smooth and soft halwa, right then and there.

Sooji Halwa – The Recipe

Ingredients:

• ½ block khoya / mawa, about 1 ½ cups when grated
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 2 tbsp milk
• ½ tsp saffron
• 1 cup water
• ½ cup roasted sooji / semolina
• ¼ cup ghee
• 2-3 tbsp each crushed cashew nuts and golden raisins

Method:

In a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat, add the grated khoya and stit continuously, till it breaks down and becomes soft. Add the powdered sugar and ground cardamom and keep stirring, till it all comes together. This should take about 5 minutes. Warm the milk and add the saffron to it. Add this to the khoya mixture and stir it in. Switch off the heat.

In another pan, bring the 1 cup of water to boil. Add the sooji to this and reduce heat to medium-low. Mix it in well. The sooji should cook in a couple of minutes.

Now add this to the khoya mixture and bring it all together over medium heat for a couple of minutes.

Heat the ghee and fry the cashews and raisins. Pour this over the halwa and mix it in.