Tirunelveli Halwa Recipe

Ingredients:

Wheat Berries/Whole Wheat – 1 Cup
Sugar – 2 Cups [ I used 1.5 cups]
Water – 1/2 cup
Cashewnuts – 1/4 cup
Ghee – 3/4 Cup
Cardamom Powder – 1/2 tsp
Food Colour – a pinch [ I used mix of orange and red]

Method:
1. Clean, rinse and soak wheat berries with enough water for minimum of 8 hours or for 24hours.  I soaked for around 15 hours.
2. Rinse again soaked wheat and grind in grinder/mixer or blender with water until it become coarse paste white in colour.  Use a sieve to filter and extract milk in a bowl.  Repeat the step again, grind the remaining fibrous wheat with water and extract milk, discard the remaining wheat.
3. Cover the bowl and let it ferment overnight.
4. In a heavy bottom pan (pressure cooker works best here) add water and sugar, cook on medium flame and prepare 1 thread consistency sugar syrup.  Add food colour and mix well.
~ To check sugar syrup consistency, after sugar dissolves in water and starts to boil keep stirring the mix.  Dip hand in a bowl of water, then touch the sugar syrup with index finger (careful not to get burn as it will be very hot).  Press index and thumb finger together and slowly move the fingers apart you can see a string forming between fingers this means our sugar syrup is ready. If not, let syrup cook for a minute more and do the checking process again.
4.  Once sugar syrup is ready reduce flame to slow and add extracted milk slowly and keep stirring.  This is the important part we can’t stop the stirring process.  Once it thicken slightly, add cardamom powder and 1 tbsp of ghee and keep stirring.
5. After each minute of stirring add 1 tbsp of ghee and stir again repeat this until you use 3/4 cup to 1 cup of ghee each time adding only 1 tbsp of ghee.  After around 20-25 minutes the halwa will be glossy, forms a mass and doesn’t stick to pan anymore then it’s done.  Add cashew and stir again well.