Bengali Malpua

Malpua is a sweet Indian semolina and flour based pancake immersed in sugar syrup. We prepare malpua during jonmastomi along with many other sweets like naru and pithe. The Bengali malpua is a little different from its North Indian version. Ours is crispier than the lot. The addition of semolina in this recipe makes it crisp and crunchy.

In our home we make dry malpua. We add sugar to the batter while the more popular recipe goes with the process of dipping the fried sugar-less malpua in a sticky sugar syrup. Well...here is my family recipe of dry Malpua. It’s equally tasty and since it does not go inside the syrup it stays fresh and crisp for a long time.

Make a thick batter by mixing the flour, semolina, sugar, green cardamom powder, fennel seeds and a little warm water. Leave them covered for 1 and 1/2 hour.

Pour one ladle of the batter in the hot oil/ ghee.

Fry the malpuas until golden from both the sides.

Malpua

Makes 8-10 medium malpuas

Ingredients:

250gm of fine semolina

250gm of all purpose flour

500gm of granulated white sugar

4 green cardamoms

2 tsp fennel seeds

Enough oil + ghee to fry the malpua

2 cups of warm water

Method:

Dry roast the green cardamoms and peel off their skin. Collect the pods from the inside of the cardamoms and grind them in a mortar and pestle into a fine powder.

In a bowl take all the dry ingredients i.e. flour, semolina, green cardamom powder and fennel seeds.

Stir the dry ingredients with a spoon so that they are mixed properly.

Now add ¼ cup of warm water and stir to mix.

If the mixture is still dry add a little more water. The sugar will melt and dilute the batter in this course, so adding all the water at a time is not a good idea. You need to add enough water to make a very thick batter. If the batter becomes thin your malpua will simply not hold in the ghee.

Leave this mixture covered in the kitchen counter for a good 1 and ½ hour.

Heat enough ghee and oil to deep fry in a pan / kadai. Keep the flame on low to medium. You can use only ghee to fry, which is basically what should be used...but since ghee is so high in calorie and also expensive I use half oil and half ghee.

Pour a ladle full of the batter into the ghee and fry the malpua. Flip the malpua when one side is crisp and golden. Fry until the malpua is golden brown from both the sides.

Take the malpua out of the kadai and place it on a kitchen towel.

Follow this process until you finish the entire batter.