MALPUA

Malpua is a delicious dessert that is crispy on the outside and has a fluffy texture inside. These are so flavorful and addictive that I bet you cannot just stop by eating one. They will satisfy all your sweet cravings.

Navratri (aka Navaratri) is coming soon. It literally translates as nine nights. It is a festival that is dedicated to the worship of Durga maa and is celebrated across India with lot of pomp and festivity for 9 days (and nights). While it is a fact that the traditions and type of festivities differ from one region to another, a common factor is the preparation of lot of mouthwatering delicacies that are offered to the Goddess during the course of the festival.

My mother-in-law celebrates this festival by decorating maa Durga in different avatars each day as mentioned in Lalita Sahasranama (1000 names of Goddess Lalita or Durga), a tradition followed in South India. As she knows that I am always excited to celebrate festivals and interested to know the rituals followed all over the world she casually asked me how I was planning to celebrate Navratri this year. During the course of the conversation she told me that within the verses in Lalita Sahasranama, there are mentions of food that maa Durga has during each of the 9 days. Even though I was super excited to learn new things about the festivities from her, I forgot about it momentarily as I got busy with other things. In a day or so, I received a text message from her that listed 9 popular recipes that are prepared across India during Navratri. That was really so sweet of her.

From the list I found that on the fourth day of Navratri, by offering malpua to the Goddess in form of naivedyam (or bhog) and then partaking it as prasadam, improves the intellect and decision making ability of all the devotees. I always wanted to share my recipe of malpua on the blog, but was procrastinating all this while. So after reading its importance in the context of the festivities, I decided there is no better time than this.

Malpua is prepared using few simple ingredients like flour, semolina, sugar, and milk. Fried malpuas are then soaked in saffron flavored sugar syrup and garnished with chopped nuts. Sometimes, they are also served with a generous topping of evaporated milk dessert called rabri. No matter how you decide to serve this, they are so delicious that you cannot get enough of it. From personal experience I suggest that you reserve some for yourself even before serving and they will get over in no time.

Why wait, get into your kitchen and prepare this delicious sweet and don’t forget to let me know how this turned out. Wish you all a very happy and prosperous Navratri in advance. I will soon share the other recipes and the importance of offering them on remaining days of Navaratri, so stay tuned!

Preparation time : 40 minutes
Serves : 10 malpuas

Steps to prepare Malpua

Step I (Prepare the dough)

• In a bowl, add flour, semolina, sugar, cardamom powder, baking powder and mix well.
• Now, add milk little by little and whisk to form a batter. See that there are no lumps. Cover and keep it aside till you prepare the sugar syrup.

Step II (Prepare the sugar syrup)

• Heat sugar, water, lemon juice and saffron threads in a pan till you get single thread consistency.
• Add the cardamom powder and mix well.

Step III (Frying the malpuas – other options given in tip section)

• Heat oil in a non-stick pan for frying.
• Once the oil is hot, on a medium flame drop a laddle full of batter, 1 malpua at a time. Leave it undisturbed for a minute and then using a slotted spoon flip to the other side and fry till it is golden brown on both the sides.
• Transfer this to paper towel to absorb any excess oil.
• Repeat the process for remaining batter.
• While they are still warm, soak each malpua in the sugar syrup for about a minute and transfer it to a serving plate.
• Garnish it with dried chopped nuts of your choice. You can also serve this with rabri or whipped cream.
• Malpuas (Malpura / Malpuri) are now ready. Serve and enjoy.

Tip:

• I highly recommend using only no-stick pan for frying. Else there is a possibility that the batter will stick to the bottom of the pan.
• If you want to avoid frying you can prepare pancakes from the same batter and then soak it in sugar syrup.
• You can also prepare appe / appo using same batter.
• After the batter rests, if you feel it is really thick, add 1 or 2 tbsp of milk.
• Fry this on a medium flame to get a nice golden brown color.

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