Delicious and soft Bombay Karachi Halwa

Easy Bombay Halwa Recipe

Here’s a simple recipe for homemade Bombay Karachi Halwa. Also called Corn Flour Halwa, or Bombay Halwa or just Karachi Halwa, this is one of the tastiest and easiest halwas to make. And it’s made with just a handful of simple ingredients. Traditionally made in bright colours like red, green, yellow, and orange, this halwa is soft and chewy and has a rich taste.

So easy to make but incredibly delicious. Do dive it a shot. For some other tasty Indian sweets or mithais, you could try out my Rava Besan Laddu recipe, as also, my shortcut Motichoor Ladoo recipe, or Besan Pedas and Modaks.

Ingredients

½ cup cornflour
1 ¼ cups water
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
1 tsp lime juice or 2 to 3 pinches of citric acid
3 ½ tbsp ghee
Food colour
¼ tsp ground cardamom
Almonds, cashew nuts, and watermelon seeds

Procedure

1. Lightly toast the melon seeds, almonds and cashew nuts. Chop the almonds and cashew nuts roughly.
2. To a non-stick pan, add the sugar and ½ cup water. Stir this on medium heat till all the sugar dissolves. You don’t have to prepare a one or two string syrup.
3. Disperse the cornflour in 1 ¼ cups of water.
4. Once the sugar solution comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and add in the lime juice.
5. Give the cornflour mixture a stir and then add it to the sugar syrup.
6. With the heat on low, keep stirring the mixture. The mix will start thickening. After 10 minutes, it will be smooth and silky.
7. Now add 1 tbsp ghee. Keep stirring the mixture till the ghee gets absorbed into it.
8. After 5 – 6 minutes of stirring, add 1 more tbsp of ghee, continue stirring the mix for 5-6 minutes more and then add in yet another tbsp of ghee. Keep stirring.
9. After around 20 minutes from the start, add the food colour and around ¾ of the nuts, retaining ¼ of them to sprinkle on top of the halwa afterwards.
10. Add the remaining ½ tbsp of ghee and the ground cardamom. After stirring the mix for a minute, test around a teaspoon of it by adding it to a small bowl of room temperature water. If it is too soft or disintegrates in the water, cook the halwa for 5 minutes more. But if it is firm and stretches slightly, the halwa is done. Another sign is that the ghee begins to separate once the halwa has reached the setting stage.
11. I like the halwa to be just slightly stretchy and not too rubbery and chewy. However, if you want the halwa to be firmer than this and more rubbery, you will have to let it cook for another 5 to 10 minutes and by then even more ghee will separate.
12. Pour the halwa into a mould after greasing the base and lining it with parchment paper. Level the top of the halwa and then sprinkle the rest of the nuts on top of it.
13. Now let the halwa cool completely. This should take around 2 hours. Then take it out of the mould. Cut it into squares,
The halwa took a little over 25 minutes to cook to the setting point.
Enjoy!