Halkova / Palkova /Maida wadi
In India, we celebrate any happy occasion with sweets. Recently, I hit 5000 followers on instagram. To celebrate this occasion, I wanted to make a sweet dish that is close to my heart. I couldn’t think of any other dish than Halkova.
I have so many childhood memories associated with this sweet. I used to have it during my lunch breaks in school from the street vendor who stood outside our campus with various delicious nibbles. My brother, Gautam also started to have these sweets after I bought them home from school one day. My mom used to scold me for bringing home junk food. She used to say, “Hiri akkan chali mani mandig yella” which very loosely translates into “the notorious habits of elder sister influences everyone young person in the house”. After I finished school, I stopped having it because these weren’t available in our college. When I hit 5k followers, I was very happy because 5000 people like my food posts and enjoy seeing my recipes on their feeds. So, I wanted to make a sweet dish that is close to my heart and that makes me nostalgic. That’s when I remembered I should make this dish- Halkova/Maida Barfi/ Palkova or my brother and I call it,”maida hittina wadi”.
If you want to make a quick sweet for your guests or for yourself, then do give it a try. The recipe for this is given below.
Halkova
Ingredients
- ¼ cup ghee /oil
- 1 cup maida / all purpose flour
- A pinch of cardamom powder
- 1 cup powdered sugar
- A few pieces of raisins
- 1 tbsp ghee for greasing the pan
Instructions
- Heat up a pan and add ghee. When ghee melts, add maida and cardamom powder.
- Cooking on a low flame for 8-10 minutes until you get a nice roasted aroma.
- Keep it aside and let it cool.
- When its warm, add in the sugar and mix.
- Grease a pan with some ghee or oil and spread the mixture evenly. Keep the thickness of the mixture according to your desire. I have it around 0.5 inches.
- Randomly place some raisins on top of the mixture and gently press it without breaking.
- Keep it to set in the refrigerator for half an hour.
- After 30 minutes, take the pan out and cut it into squares or any other shape you like.
Notes
- Keep stirring continuously while roasting maida.
- Make sure the maida is not hot but slighlty warm while adding sugar.
- You can also use butter or oil instead of ghee.
- You can add dry fruits of your choice after adding sugar. Make sure you roast the dry fruits in ghee or oil before adding them to the mixture.
- Do not use high flame while making this dish. Try to keep the flame between low to medium.