Malpua – A sweet delight of tradition and flavor

Malpua is a traditional Indian dessert known for its soft texture and rich flavors. Made with all-purpose flour, milk, dry fruits, and aromatic spices like cardamom and fennel, these sweet pancakes are fried until golden and soaked in fragrant sugar syrup. Resting the batter is key to achieving the perfect texture. Whether served during festivals or as a treat, malpua offers a delightful blend of taste and tradition.

Malpua

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of all-purpose flour

• ½ cup of milk

• 1 tbsp of broken cashew nuts

• 1 tbsp of raisins. You can use the yellow raisins or the black raisins, whatever you prefer. We have used the black raisins for this recipe

• 1 tbsp of dry coconut chopped

• 4 pieces of crushed cardamom

• ½ tsp of fennel seeds, which is optional. If you don’t like the taste of fennel seeds, you can avoid that but we would recommend adding fennel seeds

• To make the syrup, you will need 3 cups of water, 2 cups of sugar, 1 tsp of green cardamom powder, and oil to fry.

Method:

1. Take the all-purpose flour in a bowl and mix milk into it by adding little by little

2. Add some cardamom powder, cashew nuts, raisins, dry coconut, mix it well and leave the batter aside to rest. Resting is a very important process in making malpua because it gives you a nice textured malpua. At least half an hour of resting is recommended. But if you can keep it aside for about 2 to 3 hours nothing like it

3. To make sugar syrup, take sugar and water in a large vessel and bring it to boil, stirring continuously

4. After some time, remove from heat, add the rest of the cardamom powder and set it aside

5. You can also add saffron to it to give it a slight yellowish colour but that’s entirely an optional step.

6. Once the pua mixer has rested for some time, heat oil and pour one small ladle of batter into the hot oil for frying. The method for dropping this batter into the oil is by following small circular motion so that the pua looks like that of a puri

7. Fry the pua on both sides, until golden brown. The right texture of the pua is when it appears slightly golden brown at the centre and a little darker brown on the edges and that you can achieve only if you set the batter aside for resting for sometime

8. Once the pua is fried on both sides, take out the fried pua from oil and transfer it into the sugar syrup immediately and relish this tasty delicacy!