Hi Friends,
Source
Halwa is a kind of sweet prepared in India from most of the vegetables and pulses. Like we have moong dal halwa (red lentil), Carrot halwa, Besan halwa and so on and we also have halwa (Dessert) prepared from Pumpkin!!!
Yes, as we are approaching Halloween, it's a nice thing to know about an Indian recipe prepared with Pumpkin, cashews, milk and few other ingredients.
Pumpkins are normally used in India for preparing sambar, curries, fry dishes, sweet items and even for kind of chutneys as well.
So, let's go and see how we normally prepare the Pumpkin Halwa (or Pumpkin Dessert).
Source
As we are approaching Diwali festival, the festival of lights, sweets are a common thing now in India and especially, laddoos and halwas are most common Ones.
Pumpkin Halwa is a kind of sweet prepared from grated or pressure cooker cooked sweet and the common ingredients for this are Pumpkin, sugar, milk, fried cashew nuts, cardamom powder
Let's see how we normally prepare the Pumpkin Halwa.
First, clean the Pumpkin and cut into half and either we can grate the Pumpkin into finer threads like structures after removing the outer layer of pumpkin or bake it directly in pressure cooker and then remove the outer layer and then smash the baked pumpkin to smoothen it.
Then, keep the broken cashew nuts ready with frying those using ghee on a normal flame to tur them light brown.
Pour the grated/baked pumpkin into a frying pan with ghee and fry it for 4 5 minutes under low flame so that, it won't stick into the frying pan.
When the fried pumpkin becomes smooth enough, add milk and cardamom powder to make it even smoother and keep stirring it as it shouldn't stick to the pan and fry it until the smell of the milk goes off and becomes more flavorful.
Add sugar to the mix of milk and pumpkin (normally less sugar only as pumpkin will already have the sweetness) and mix it well until watery content is removed and halwa becomes a bit thick.
Normally, we use 1/8th quantity of sugar for the quantity of pumpkin. Like, if we plan to use 1 cup of pumpkin, then 1/8 cup of sugar (a bit more or less) will do as more sugar means, the halwa consumption will be very less as we can't eat it more with more sweetness.
Once the aroma of halwa starts spreading, add the fried split cashews to garnish it and the halwa should be ready.
Some people will add grated coconut to the grated pumpkin which adds more flavor, but we need to keep in mind that, if we use coconut, the halwa needs to be consumed at the earliest, I mean, we can't keep it for many days as the coconut will smart smelling after a day or 2.
One point to remember is to not to use water for this as the taste will be different with water usage and that natural aroma will not be there with use of water. The milk we use will be enough to create moisture and on top of that, pumpkin itself will have moisture content once we fry it and sugar will also add moisture to that.
This is One recipe we normally prepare (my mom especially) whenever there is a pumpkin season and my mom is a fond lover of sweets and not just with pumpkin, we also get to taste carrot halwa, moong dal halwa, even coconut halwa as well.
India is known for variety of sweets and this is One of out favorite recipes. I will be happy to come up with another blog with detailed photos of this recipe when we prepare this next time.
Why I am writing about this topic?
Because I am participating in OctoberInLeo, the monthly prompts from 
and 
team as announced through this blog which gives us an opportunity write on different topics and here is my response to day 29 with topic being Share a VEGAN recipe with Pumpkin! as we can see from below screenshot.
Source
Request you to check these topics and see if you can participate with blogs on some of these and guess what, you will be rewarded with Crypto for this.
The festival season brings us more joy and also opportunity to savor many different sweets and we just enjoy these festivals.
That is all I wanted to write in this blog and I hope you like this recipe and try it to taste the Pumpkin Halwa (we also call it as Kaddu ka Halwa) and this pumpkin dessert is the One I wanted to share it in this blog.
Wishing you all great Tuesday :)
Join the new Official Telegram for Splinterlands via link given below to participate in contests and have fun.
https://t.me/splinterlandsHQ
Not yet signed up for Splinterlands?
You can join using my referral link: splinterlands.io and get some monsters from me :)
(