Celebrating Holi With Mango Badam Halwa

Great new discovery, combining fruit with nuts in a new exciting way! Fudge desserts are not common in Croatia. I like the way they are easy to prepare and you can play with the ingredients for special twists.

We tried this dessert as a part of learning Indian recipes for Holi, a popular ancient Hindu festival, also known as the “Festival of Love”, the “Festival of Colors”, and the “Festival of Spring”, a few years back with our Google+ foodie community. Thanks Anu Nagaraja for this wonderful recipe. It was a pleasant surprise and a combination of mango and almonds was perfect! 😃

Celebrating Holi With Mango Badam Halwa and +Indrani Sen

We followed the recipe closely, except we didn’t use saffron strands.
I don’t know how that affects the taste, but it was great like this… and we ate it all pretty fast!

Ingredients

  • 260 g (1 cup) of mango puree or mango pulp from fresh mango (any sweet mango which is less fibrous)
  • 90 g (1 cup) ground almonds
  • 50 g (1/4 cup) granulated sugar
  • 1 tsp of cardamom powder
  • 6 – 8 each roughly sliced/chopped pistachios and almonds (we used hickory smoked almonds)

Preparation

  1. Peel the mango and cut it into cubes.
  2. In a deep thick bottomed pan cook the mango with sugar on low heat.
  3. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil. Boil for another minute and then add ground almonds, powdered cardamom and half the quantity of chopped nuts.
  4. Cook stirring well. You will notice that the mixture thickens. Keep cooking and stirring until it begins to come together like a ball but not too firm.
  5. Pour the cooked mixture on a baking sheet.
  6. Spread the mixture using the back of a spoon or a palate knife.
  7. Sprinkle over the rest of the chopped nuts, press them down gently so that they stick on the surface.
  8. Cool completely before cutting into small cubes. We put it in a freezer for an hour.

Before serving garnish with nuts if you like 😃

What is your favorite fudge dessert?