Koya also called as mawa in Hindi  or khawa in Marathi, is a dairy product, prepared by thickening full fat milk , stirring continuously till it thickens and becomes grainy and dry. It is similar to ricotta cheese and is mainly used for preparing sweets like barfi, pedha , ladoo , gulab jamun etc in India , Nepal, Bangladesh .

There is a shortcut way to prepare this khoa by mixing together milk powder and cream in a bowl and popping into microwave or you can prepare it in traditional way like how I have prepared my mawa .

Today,  I wanted to prepare Choco Almond barfi which required mawa. I didn’t wanted to use store bought mawa for my recipe, so prepared it from scratch. Of course you require lot of patience to prepare it from scratch , as it consumes most of your time. 

If you want to prepare your mawa in advance for any recipe, be sure to refrigerate it in the airtight container and use whenever necessary. 

Cooking Time: 1 Hour 15 Minutes

Yields: 1 Cup

Ingredients:

• 1 Litre milk

Method:

Reduce the heat to lowest and keep stirring till the milk settles down otherwise it will pour out.

After about 40 minutes, the milk starts to get grainy. Keep an eye on it and keep stirring.

Lower the heat to medium high. Slowly you will see that the milk gets thickened and starts leaving the bottom of the pan. You will see the results as below after about 50 minutes.

Once the milk is totally thickened and forms a kind of dough, your mawa is ready as shown below. Switch off and remove from heat. It took me about 1 hour 15 minutes to come to this consistency.