Today was just great. The good news of me completing my post-graduation with 1st class called for a little celebration. Sweets and desserts are an important part of celebration at my place when something really good and significant happens.

Since it’s been raining incessantly for a couple of days, I was a bit reluctant to step outside to buy some sweets or may be a cake. So I decided to whip up an easy dessert recipe at home itself. I had very little to work with today; limited ingredients. I had some home-made paneer that I made yesterday. It was the soft crumbled paneer and not those firm cubes. So I decided I would make mawa using the paneer.

Mawa is the milk product that you get after reducing milk for several hours while adding vinegar to it little by little as you go. It is creamy, juicy, crumbly and melt-in-the-mouth thing. Making mawa from milk takes patience and time. So I decided to make it from paneer. It turned out equally delicious and juicy.

So this is like a halwa recipe consisting of mawa, coconut and cashews. I tried making this dessert yummier by replacing sugar with jaggery. It just makes the flavor so much better. Since the mawa has a lot of texture, I didn’t need to add any raisins. I added a little condensed milk to make this dessert taste rich. Since the condensed milk is already sweet, go easy on the jaggery. We want a perfectly balanced, sweet and creamy mawa dessert and not a sweet mess.

For the purpose of measurement, 1 cup = 250 ml. Let us see how to make it!