The Authentic Bengali Malpua

We shifted to our new house about twelve days back. This is my first post here since I managed to get the broadband connection yesterday only after much follow up. There are several other works piled up, setting up of a new house is so much trouble and labour. Carton full of clothes, books, other household items etc. are lying around but nothing can keep me off my passion, cooking and blogging for long.

Authentic Bong Malpua

The first thing I made coming to this place is a traditional Bengali sweet but universally loved by all sweet lovers. Offered them to Laxmi Narayan during the puja(house warming), and then we all had a fair share of this heavenly melt-in-mouth ‘prasad’(any food offered to God during pujas). Yes, you guessed it right… it is Malpua. I learnt this sweet from my maa and you all know that the traditional Bengali recipes I shared on my blog are either my mom’s or grandmom’s.  This is the authentic one, because most of the malpuas available in the sweet shops nowadays lack the authentic flavour, use khoya (dried whole milk), but original Bong malpuas never contained khoyas, almonds, pistachios or any type of nut.

 

Authentic Bong Malpuas

The way I made it:

Ingredients:

• 1 litre full cream milk reduced to ¾ th after simmering
• 200 gms maida/all purpose flour
• 150 gms sooji/semolina
• 400 gms sugar for sugar syrup/chashni + 100 gms for the batter
• ½ tsp freshly crushed black peppercorns
• 1 tsp fennel seeds/mauri/saunf
• Ghee/clarified butter for frying as per requirement
• Cherries for garnishing

Authentic Bong Malpuas

Process:

Step 1:
 

Take a mixing bowl and add milk, sugar, fennel seeds, crushed black pepper. Now add maida and sooji, mix slowly and properly so that no lumps are formed. Do not make the batter too thick or too runny. If it is too thin the malpus will break while frying and if they are too thick then they will not soak the sugar syrup properly and you will never get the melt in mouth malpuas.

Step 2:

In the mean time make the sugar syrup or chashni in a pan by adding sugar to two big cups of water and let it simmer on low heat until the sugar dissolves completely and the syrup thickens to a single wire consistency. You can add more water if needed.

Step 3:

Heat ghee in a kadai and fry the malpuas delicately adding one scoop of a ladle to the ghee at a time.

Step 4:

Transfer the fried malpuas to the pan containing the sugar syrup and let them soak in for half an hour before serving. Garnish with cherries on top.