Homemade halva – semolina pudding
The recipes published here are seasonal and are part of our menu and the dishes can be tested at Botanica Guest House in Nadarevo. In addition, we would like to share these recipes with you so that you can prepare and enjoy them at home.
The dessert halva or semolina pudding has Orient origins but is also very popular in Bulgaria. Or at least it used to be. Today some households still keep the tradition of preparing it at home. While others have broken the chain in the tradition for various reasons, such as not enjoying its taste or due to the invasion of plenty of popular and modern desserts. That is why, if you don’t have bad feelings for the semolina pudding, we offer our variation of the recipe, which can easily bring it to the top of your list of homemade desserts.
How to make
We place baking paper on the bottom of baking pan and we place raisins, walnuts and cinnamon over it. You can improvise and add other dried fruits and nuts.
We caramelise 1/3 of the sugar and we add to it the rest of the sugar and immediately add the water. The sugar syrup has to start boiling. We can add one or two vanilla powder packs.
In the meantime, we fry the semolina in the hot butter until it gets a preferred color and taste. When the syrup is ready we add it to the semolina-butter mix and we stir until it is all mixed well. While it is still hot, we roll it in the pan on top of the fruits and nuts. It is good to use a spatula in order to shape it but we need to be fast as it starts to get stiff quickly.
Once it is cooled, we need to turn the semolina pudding, so that the bottom with the fruits and nuts is now on top of the dessert. We serve it in pieces.
We can now enjoy the fruits of our work and sweeten our day.
*The pictures show the quantity for 2 doses of the dessert.
Ingredients
1 tea cup of semolina
1 tea cup of sugar (2/3 of the cup also works)
2 tea cups of water
100 g butter (for vegan version you can use sunflower or coconut oil)