Papaya Halwa

Its a task to make my lil one eat some fruits. There are very few fruits that he would eat it raw, else I have to transform them into more yummier things to let it go in. Papaya is one such fruit. The way he would call out papaya and throw tantrums if we don't get it, while in a grocery store, you would think he is gonna hog on it all by himself. But no, that's not the fact. He loves Papaya Halwa, but doesn't know that papaya is in it. Mama hasn't told him yet with the fear that he would give up on that too.

I used to love papaya halwa. I still do. So we make it quite often and serve it as a dessert post meals. If you too would like to try it, here is the recipe to it.

Ingredients

1. 1/2 kg of fully ripened papaya - peeled, deseeded and cut into thin slices
2. 1 cup of shaved jaggery
3. 2 tbsp of ghee/ clarified butter
4. 3/4 cup of milk
5. 1 tbsp of rice flour

Method

• In a pan, add the shaved jaggery and 1/4 cup of water. Bring it to a boil. The jaggery would have melted. Now pass it through a strainer to remove impurities, if any.
• In a pressure cooker, add the papaya, melted jaggery and ghee.
• Cook it. For me it took, 1 whistle on high heat and 2 whistles on medium heat. Remove it from the heat and let the pressure go down.
• Open the pressure cooker and mash the papaya well. Now pour the milk into it.
• Bring the entire mixture into a boil. Reduce the heat to medium heat. 
• Add the rice flour to it and mix it well. Keep cooking it untill it starts to thicken and turns into one mass. Turn off the heat.
• Serve it warm or let it cool down and refrigerate it to serve chilled.

Tips

1. To avoid the overhead of mashing down the cooked papaya, you could choose to use grated papaya rather than cubed papaya. 
2. Adjust the amount of jaggery as per your taste. The amount mentioned would also vary according to the variety of jaggery you are using. I would recommend to use dark variety of jaggery for better colour and taste.
3. Adding rice flour, helps to thicken the mixture and also give it a nice flavour. But do not overdo it.
4. You could add milk to the pressure cooker along with other ingredients, but that would result in small cheese like lumps in the halwa. If you are okay with that, you could go ahead and add milk along with other ingredients and pressure cook it.
5. You could add more ghee if you wish to. Addition of ghee would enhance flavour and also give it a glaze.
6. I haven't cooked it to form it into a hard mass. My family loves it to be soft. If you continue to cook for longer, you would get a perfect halwa texture which could be stored for a little longer.

Recipe Courtesy : My mom

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