Mohanthal is a traditional Gujarati sweet. It’s tastes a bit like fudge and one of the most popular and traditional dishes served at Gujarati weddings.
Ingredients:
- 500 grams gram flour.
- 300 grams ghee
- half a cup milk.
- 250 grams unsweetened mava or khoya (if shop bought then grate it )
- 350 grams sugar.
- 2 tablespoons, coarsely grounded cardamom seeds.
- half tea spoon essence of saffron.
- 25 grams each of finely sliced almonds and pistachio nuts.
Method:
1. Add 50 grams of ghee to flour and mix nicely with a fork.
2. Add in the milk, mix thoroughly using a fork.
3. Sieve this mixture through a large holed sieve. The largers grains which are sieved through help to give the mohanthal a lovely grainy texture.
4. Heat the remaining ghee and stir in the flour. Keep stirring and cooking the mixture until the flour looks golden brown.
6. Mix 2 cups water in the sugar and heat this mixture gently until it forms a syrup. The syrup should be of one-thread consistency . To check this – take a drop of the syrup and rub it between your thumb and first finger. When you separate the thumb and finger, the syrup should be thick enough to form a thin string.
7. Add syrup to the cooked flour and mava and keep on stirring till the mixture turns thick. Add a couple of drops of saffron essence. Keep stirring for a couple of minutes. (In Gujarat – they tend to use more ghee and when the mohanthal cools down, you can see a layer of ghee. My recipe uses less ghee and it doesn’t make any difference to the taste)
8. Pour the mixture in a greased dish similar to a flan dish (thali) and level the surface using a flat spoon. Sprinkle more sliced nuts to decorate the mohanthal.
9. Let the Mohanthal cool down. This could take several hours so cover the thali and leave it in a cool place. Then cut the Mohanthal into small rectangle or diamond shapes and store in air-tight container.
