Mango Kesari or Mango Sheera
Mango kesari is an Indian sweet pudding made with semolina or broken wheat, mango pulp, spiced up with cardamom and garnished with nuts.
Servings: 4 to 5
Ingredients
- 1 Cup Semolina Sooji/Rava
- 1½ to 2 Cups water depending on the desired consistency
- ½ cup Sugar
- A pinch of saffron Optional
- 1 Cup Mango Pulp or Mango Puree
- 1 to 2 Tablespoons Ghee Clarified butter, divided
- A pinch of salt
- ½ teaspoon cardamom powder
- 10 Cashews toasted in a teaspoon ghee over medium heat until light brown
- For Mango Puree:
- One Whole Mango Skinned, cored & Roughly Chopped
- Blend together the chopped mango until smooth and set it aside.
Instructions
- Heat a pan over medium heat and dry roast semolina until you get a nice aroma. It can be roasted in a teaspoon of ghee too, as ghee enhances the aroma.
- Heat a sauce pan with 2 cups of water over medium heat. To this add sugar and saffron. Allow it to boil rapidly.
- Once the water starts to boil, add semolina slowly little by little in a stream and keep stirring with another hand. Be quick in stirring and slow in adding semolina to prevent the formation of lumps.
- Break any lumps and stir gently. Cook till all the water evaporates.
- Add the mango pulp and a pinch of salt. Mix gently.
- Cook for about 5 to 7 minutes stirring occasionally to prevent burning to get the desired consistency.
- Add 1 tablespoon ghee and mix well . Turn off the heat.
- Add cardamom powder and mix well.
- Add toasted cashews over the Mango kesari, scraping down all the ghee from the pan. Give it a nice mix.
- Serve hot with chopped nuts sprinkles on top.
Notes
1. Dry roasting the Semolina is very important. If you don’t dry roast, the Mango kesari will become very sticky and gum like. You can use semolina or broken wheat for this recipe, just the colour may differ.
2. Adjust the sugar to suit your taste and requirement.
3. Stir once you add the semolina to boiling water to avoid formation of lumps.
4. You can roast semolina with ghee for a nice aroma and texture, but avoid it if you want to cut down a few calories.
5. This halwa tends to thicken a bit as it sits. You can microwave it for a minute before serving.
6. You can follow the same recipe and make plain semolina/sooji halwa, just avoid mango in the recipe and follow the same process. Mango can be substituted with pineapple pulp to make pineapple kesari.
7. You can also prepare this using milk instead of water, but I prefer this way.
8. It is believed that if semolina is thick, it does not get cooked nicely when cooked along with sugar, but I tried cooking semolina along with sugar solution many times and I never had problems. So you can add sugar first or once semolina is cooked. But you can prepare either ways.
9. If you like a moist looking kesari rather than the greasy one, use more of the mango pulp, may be increase pulp by half a cup to the mentioned quantity. Note: These are just my tips with experience and trial & error, so please do not use all the options given to make the recipe. First follow the original recipe and then make changes while trying it again.
2. Adjust the sugar to suit your taste and requirement.
3. Stir once you add the semolina to boiling water to avoid formation of lumps.
4. You can roast semolina with ghee for a nice aroma and texture, but avoid it if you want to cut down a few calories.
5. This halwa tends to thicken a bit as it sits. You can microwave it for a minute before serving.
6. You can follow the same recipe and make plain semolina/sooji halwa, just avoid mango in the recipe and follow the same process. Mango can be substituted with pineapple pulp to make pineapple kesari.
7. You can also prepare this using milk instead of water, but I prefer this way.
8. It is believed that if semolina is thick, it does not get cooked nicely when cooked along with sugar, but I tried cooking semolina along with sugar solution many times and I never had problems. So you can add sugar first or once semolina is cooked. But you can prepare either ways.
9. If you like a moist looking kesari rather than the greasy one, use more of the mango pulp, may be increase pulp by half a cup to the mentioned quantity. Note: These are just my tips with experience and trial & error, so please do not use all the options given to make the recipe. First follow the original recipe and then make changes while trying it again.