Sheera or Sooji Halwa or Rava Kesari has been my all-time favourite. I have always tasted sheera at temples from my childhood and devoured the taste. I always remember my days in Oman when the ‘Prasad’ served at the temples to the devotees was always sheera. At times the idea of queuing up again to taste the delicious sheera came to my mind. That is when I decided to try to make it at home. I was all geared up to start with my attempts after buying all the ingredients hoping that things worked positively. Initial attempts were failures without getting the right consistency. But that didn’t disappoint me. After my initial failures, now I have mastered it and these days I serve sheera at temples to devotees.
The name of this dish varies from region to region. In western part of India, it is known as sheera. It is called halwa in Northern part of India, while the name rava kesari is used for this dish South India.
Ingredients
- 1 ¼ cup Water
- ¼ cup Ghee/ clarified butter
- ½ cup fine sooji or semolina
- ½ cup granulated Sugar
- ¼ tsp. cardamom powder
- 2 tbsps. Almonds, cashews, raisins, chopped
Method
- First, take ghee in a pan and roast the nuts and the raisins.
- After roasting the nuts, turn the heat on low-medium and add semolina to it, stirring constantly.
- Keep stirring till the semolina is roasted to a light brown colour. You will get nice toasty aroma of semolina. Make sure you don’t burn the semolina.
- Next add sugar and mix it properly.
- Add water to the dry mix and keep stirring continuously, so that it does not form any lumps.
- Cook till the mix gets thick and starts to leave the sides of the pan. Turn the gas off and add cardamom powder and mix it well.
- Sheera or sooji halwa is ready to be served. Enjoy warm or cold!!
