Flavours of Singapore Challenge: Gajar Halwa

One of the great things about being part of a community of foodies is that different blogger's posts encourage me to stretch and cook something challenging or new-to-me. Love it!

I came across this invitation from Nayna of the Simply.Food blog: "Inviting Adventurous foodies to cook for flavours of Singapore event." Okay, I'm in!

The rules - "Prepare a vegetarian dish with Singaporean flavor and flair. And do it during the month of January." I can do that.

Perusing her suggested websites for recipes, my mouth began to water at the combinations of spices and I could just imagine the aroma that would be drifting from my kitchen.

Though many different dishes caught my eye - bean curd with crab sauce and coconut pork, for instance - the limitation of making a vegetarian dish drew to me this dessert, a colorful carrot pudding. Scented with cardamom and studded with cashews, it's delicious and so easy! So while my husband and older son were working on Riley's La Purisima mission project, I grabbed my littlest cooker and whisked him into the kitchen for this challenge. He shredded carrots and stirred tirelessly.

I read many different different versions of gajar halwa and adapted to create this, our take on gajar halwa for your Flavours of Singapore challenge. Here you go, Nanya...

 

• 6 carrots, finely shredded
• 12 oz evaporated milk
• 4 T butter
• 1/3 C organic brown sugar
• splash of ginger syrup
• 1 t cardamom powder
• raw cashew nuts, chopped for garnish

Melt the butter in a frying pan on medium heat. Add the shredded carrots and cook until tender and slightly changed in color.

Add the milk and cook until evaporated. Next add the sugar, ginger syrup, and cardamom powder and cook for another three minutes until the halwa starts to pull away from the side of frying pan.

Garnish with cashew nuts. Serve hot.

After we indulged, we had a little geography lesson so the boys could see where the dessert was from. Delicious!