The process starts with making ricotta from milk, so heat milk in a wide vessel. As it comes to rolling boil, simmer it. Stirring continuously with a ladle, add lemon juice spoon by spoon. The lemon juice will cause the milk to curdle and whey separates. Keep stirring until all of the lemon juice has been added.You'll see solid bits forming and floating to the top of the clear whey. Then switch off the flame.

Pour this mixture on to a strainer so that whey strains out leaving ricotta. Now this ricotta still contains whey, hence tie it in cheese cloth and hang for at least 20 minutes.

Spoon the drained ricotta on a wide, non stick pan. Add around 3 tsp of ghee and heat the pan in medium heat. Using ladle keep breaking the ricotta for around 15 minutes.

When the ricotta looks grainy, add 1/4 cup of milk and 3/4 cup of sugar. Let this mixture cool down.

Transfer the cooled mixture in to mixer jar, grind it to smooth paste and put it back in to cooking pan.

Cook this smooth ricotta mixture in medium heat with continuous stirring. As you stir, the mixture comes together like a lump. You need to keep it breaking as it cooks. Again the mixture becomes dry and grainy. You can notice very little color changes now.

Again add some milk and ghee. Keep cooking the peda mixture without leaving it unattended.

You have to keep adding the reserved milk at every stage whenever the mixture becomes too dry and grainy. Milk turns it in to mass and cooking should continue with stirring till the color of peda changes to brown. This is the last stage when you get brown colored, grainy peda mix. Turn off the heat. Let it cool.

The grainy peda mixture is now to be transferred to mixer jar and run it for a while. Taking a small lemon sized peda-mix, give a oval shape. Roll these peda over granulated sugar.

Drool-worthy, effort-worthy home made dharwad peda is ready.

When curdling the milk you either use lemon juice or curds. But these curdling agents should be added little by little with one hand stirring the milk continuously.

Quantity of curdling agent is very important. If you use less of it, you will not get complete ricotta. If you feel the curdling is not complete, use some more lemon or curds.

Additional 2 cups of milk is reserved to add whenever the peda mixture becomes too dry and moisture less. Adding milk while stirring the mix helps it to get brown color.

At any step of this whole process, you can taste and adjust sugar as per your taste buds.

For uneven shape of peda, throw them in to bowl of granulated sugar from a distance.

The process of making Dharwad peda is time consuming where you will be stirring the mixture for long hours. It took almost 2.5 hours for me to prepare peda out of 2 liters milk.

Store these home made peda in air tight container. It can last for a fortnight, mine emptied within a week.