Sheera is a popular Indian pudding dessert recipe with delicious flavor, ready in less than 20 minutes. Sheera Recipe or Sooji Ka Halwa is prepared using ghee, rava (sooji, semolina), sugar, and dried fruits & nuts of your choice. This Indian dessert is offered to God during Ganesh Chaturthi, Varalakshmi pooja, Navratri, Diwali, Ram Navami, Kanya puja, Makara Sankranti, Sai Guruvar, etc., in the form of naivedyam or prasad.
Prep Time5 minutesmins
Cook Time12 minutesmins
Total Time17 minutesmins
Course: Breakfast, Dessert, sweets
Cuisine: Indian
Diet: Vegetarian
Servings: 6servings
Calories: 291kcal
Author: Kushi
Equipment
Pan
Ingredients
½cupGhee (can reduce to ¼ cup )
2tablespoonCashews, chopped
2tablespoonAlmonds chopped
1tablespoonRaisins chopped
½cupSemolina (sooji or rava or durum wheat)
1 ½cupsWater
½cupSugar
½teaspoonCardamom powder
Instructions
In a pot, add water and heat it. Let the water come to a boil.
1 ½ cups Water
Meanwhile, in another pan on medium flame, heat ghee. To this, add cashews and almonds, and just when it starts becoming light golden, add raisins and saute for a few seconds.
½ cup Ghee, 2 tbsp Cashews, chopped, 2 tbsp Almonds chopped, 1 tbsp Raisins chopped
Add sooji (semolina) and roast on medium flame until aromatic. Roasting sooji generally takes less than 3 minutes. I have roasted for just a minute or 2. The more you roast, the color of the final product changes. Keep stirring. Else, it will burn from the bottom. Check out the video here on making of authentic and traditional sheera halwa.
½ cup Semolina
Now add the hot water and keep stirring. Be careful as sooji is going to splutter when hot water is being added to it. Keep stirring until you see the water is absorbed completely.
To the cooked suji, add sugar and mix well. The mixture may look gooey for a minute, but it will start becoming thick again. Cook until ghee leaves the side of the pan.
½ cup Sugar
Finally, add cardamom powder, mix, and switch off the flame.
To get the perfect temple-style sheera, always follow the ratio of ghee:semolina (suji, rava):sugar is 1: 1: 1 and 1.5 cups of water. But to cut down on fat, you can reduce ghee to ¼ cup in the recipe above, and the amount of water will vary depending on the type of semolina used.
If you want a richer sheera, use milk instead of water or use half and half.
You can vary the amount of dry fruits and nuts as desired.
While pouring hot water, be careful as it is going to splutter.
I use Bombay rava (a fine variety of sooji) while making sheera or sooji ka halwa.