Wash and soak split yellow moong dal for 3 hours.

Drain the water completely and grind it to a slightly coarse paste without water. If your blender does not budge, add just around 1 tbsp of water.

Heat 1 1/2 cups of water in a pan. Add sugar and stir. Once sugar dissolves, turn off the heat. You do not have to make any sugar syrup. Add cardamom powder and saffron strands to the sugar water. Keep it aside.

In a non stick pan, warm 5 tbsp of ghee, turn off the heat. Add the moong dal paste and mix well.

Then turn on the heat and cook the moong dal paste on medium heat stirring continuously.

Break lumps if any and cook the moong dal paste on medium low heat stirring continuously until it turn crumbly and light brown. It will take around 20 minutes. You need lot of patience for this as you have to keep stirring it all the time

Then add the sugar water, mix well and cook covered stirring from time to time.

Once it thickens, add another tbsp of ghee and cook further on low heat, stirring in between

To make it more rich, you can add milk instead of water. You can also add a little sugar less khoya.

Note - It is preferable to use non stick pan to prevent the dal from sticking to the pan.