Strawberry Sheera and Blueberry Sheera

Happy Dassra everyone. I made these today to celebrate the festival. This is the first time I tried both. A friend had recently mentioned having eaten strawberry sheera. So as I was racking my brains deciding what sweet to make for today, this suddenly came back. After doing some research online, I decided to try both kinds since I had a box of both berries.

Here's how I made the Strawberry Sheera:

3/4 cup medium rava/semolina/sooji
1/2 cup ghee/clarified butter
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup strawberry puree
2 tsp sweetened condensed milk
1/4 tsp cardamon pwd
Few strawberries and nuts to garnish

First, melt the ghee in a large wok. Add the rava and fry on medium low heat for abt 15 mins till fragrant.

In the meanwhile warm the milk up in the microwave. Add to the roasted rava. Puree about 12 medium sized strawberries. If you wish you can strain the puree, but I did not do this and the end product was still smooth, with excellent flavor of the strawberry puree.

Add the strawberry puree when the milk has been absorbed in the rava.

Add the sugar, mix well. My strawberries were not very sweet, hence I added sugar equal to quantity of rava. Rava will loosen at this point. Keeping cooking on medium low heat, it will thicken up again. Add the condensed milk and cardamon pwd. Mix again. Cook, stirring occasionally till the ghee starts leaving the sides of the pan. I wanted to make this sheera into wadis or barfi like pieces, so I cooked additional 10 mins.

Then spread the mix onto a greased thali.

Mark the desired shapes on the spread sheera...

....and garnish with fresh strawberries. Let cool completely, keep in the fridge if weather is warm. When cool/chilled, cut completely and remove each individual piece.

I followed the same procedure for the blueberry sheera, but I did strain the blueberry puree. Also, I did not shape these into wadis/burfis.

Here, my strawberry and blueberry sheera is ready to be distributed to friends.