All purpose flour Halwa - Maida Alwa

Ingredients:

All purpose flour - Maida - 2 cups
Sugar - Sarkarai/Cheeni - 1 1/2 cups (One and a half)
Ghee - Nei - 1/2 cup
Cashew nuts - Munthiri paruppu - small quantity
Orange colour - A pinch/few drops

Method:

1. Mix the flour with water (Usually 55% of flour). Make like chappathi dough. It should not be too thick or too thin. Keep it covered with wet cloth for one hour.
2. Add 2 cups of water in a vessel/bowl (Measurement equal to flour). Keep the dough inside the water and knead the dough well so that flour milk is extracted. The remaining part of the dough which remains after extracting the milk should be removed and thrown away. This requires some 10 minutes to extract. Then allow the extracted milk to stay for 1 hour. Now thin portion of the milk will be floating on the top of the milk and thick portion will settle down. Remove the thin portion and throw it away.
3. Now pour this thick milk to a heavy bottomed vessel or a non-stick pan and add sugar and orange colour. Let it boil for some 15 minutes. When it becomes thick like halwa add ghee and cashew nuts. It will start leaving the sides of the kadai. Now mix them well and once it is thick transfer to a greased plate (Ghee coated). Once it is cool cut into desired shape.

Sweet and yummy halwa is ready. Serve it as evening snacks. It can be served for 4 to 5 people. It requires 30 minutes to prepare apart from leaving the dough and milk to remain.

Note: Cashew nuts need not be fried. It can be added directly.

Optional: Ingredients can be added/removed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maida_flour

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