Milk Sweet / Palkova Ingredients: (For 2 People)

Milk 500 ml Lemon juice 3 to 4 drops Sugar 4 spoons Ghee 2 to 3 tspn

Recipe:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Heat Milk in a pan and add Lemon juice into that. Keep it aside. Heat a pan. Add 2 to 3 tspns of Ghee into the pan. Pour the pre-treated Milk in to the pan and then add Sugar. Stir this mixture till the Milk separates into very tiny particles (like beach sand) and becomes thick. Now the delicious milk sweet is ready to eat.

6. Ingredients Milk: 8 cups Sugar: 1 cup Titbits from my Grandpa: Looks like they add only 1/2 cup of sugar in Srivilliputhur Palkova as the milk in nature is very sweet there.And that is the secret of the uniqueness in the palkova sold there.

Procedure: Step1: Bring the milk to a boil

7. 8. Step2: Reduce the flame and simmer for 1 hour stirring every 10 minutes. Use a flat splatula to stir and scrap the sides of the pan. Make sure that the milk does not get burnt at the bottom

9.

10. 11. Step3: After some time, the color changes to ivory color and starts to solidify

12. 13. Step4: Once it starts solidifying, add sugar and stir continuously otherwise the milk will get burnt

14. 15. Step5: Keep on stirring until the milk solidifies and starts leaving the sides of the pan

16. 17. Packed them in butter paper as sold in Andal temple.I got only 4 packets with 8 cups of milk!

18. Ingredients Wheat : 2 cups (approx 450gms) Sugar: 7 cups Water: 12 cups Cardomom powder: 1/2 tsp Ghee: 3 cups

Procedure: Step1: Soak the wheat is sufficient amount of water for 8 hrs Step2: Grind the wheat with some water and extract the wheat milk To get the milk, grind the wheat in mixie/blender for 5 minutes and filter out the milk. Grind the wheat with fresh water again and filter.Repeat this atleast 3 times

Step3: Allow the milk to ferment overnight Step4: In the morning , you will find that the thick milk has settled at the bottom and the clear liquid on top.Discard the clear liquid. I got approximately 3.5 cups of milk Note: If you are able to extract more milk, adjust the quantity of other ingredients accordingly

Fermented milk

After clearing the liquid on top

Step5: In a wide non stick pan, pour this milk and add 12 cups of water and mix well

Mixed with water

Step6: Cook in a medium flame and keep stirring once 3 -5 minutes.After 1 hour, the mixture starts to thicken

Step7: At this point add sugar and keep on stirring

Step8: Once it reaches semi solid stage, add ghee little by little and keep on stirring.After another 1 hour or so, the ghee will start oozing out.The halwa will look transparent as well.When you take the mixture in the laddle, it should slide and not stick to the laddle The ghee will really start oozing out at the last stage. I recollected more than 1/4 cup of ghee once I was done with the Halwa

Step9: Add cardomom powder and fried cashews and switch off the flame

About to be done.Still sticky

Almost done.The halwa has to slide from the spoon.Should not stick

Adding color to Halwa 1. 2. 3. 4. Heat 3 tsp of ghee Add 2 tsp of sugar and keep stirring until the sugar starts melting and starts caramelizing At one point (within a minute or two), the ghee starts changing color to brown Pour this to the Halwa mixture and you will get the required color naturally

Heat ghee and sugar

Add it to the halwa

This will become more darker once the halwa is done

Tips: 1. If you want to try this halwa for the first time, cut the recipe by half.Use only 1 cup of wheat.The yield is really huge.So 1 cup will be more than enough for a family 2. Use a good quality non stick pan so that it will be easy to stir and also to clean 3. I got only 3.5 cups of milk from 2 cups of wheat.If you extracted properly with good squeezing and grinding more than 3 times, you may get even more.In that case increase the other ingredients accordingly 4. Do not add any artificial colors.You may not get the color naturally when you are making with less quantity.However use the above tip to bring the color