Ani's Kitchen Stories

This delicious and rich tea time cake is flavoured with Cardamom and made with unique ingredient call Mawa/Khoya which is nothing but a solid milk and topped with flavourful Cardamom and saffron glaze along with chopped pistachios and sliced almonds.

The Mawa cake is rich, decadent and not overtly sweet flavoured with cardamom and once you have it, you’ll ask for more. There are many eggless versions of the cake but the real Parsi style Mawa cake calls for eggs in it which i didn’t feel like replacing it with any other ingredients.

The Mawa/Khoya is a milk that has been boiled for a long time till it becomes solid in form. You can either prepare it at home or get it from the market. Preparing at home can be tedious so I always prefer buying Khoya from the grocery stores. They’ve wide varieties and range, make sure to buy only the unsweetened Khoya.

In every bite of this cake, you’ll get the crumbly texture and taste of the Khoya pieces which I really love it. I’ve even added a cardamom saffron mix glaze topped with pistachios which makes it more desirable.

As it’s a Parsi cake, you’ll get to enjoy it mostly in Irani cafés in Mumbai, Pune with Parsi population where the cafés or bakery shops would sell this decadent dessert as muffins. As I’m a big fan of this cake, I tried my hand on it and there’s no stepping back. In future, I would like to keep this particular tea time cake in my home bakery menu.

When I made it for the first time, I followed the traditional recipe and made a slight twist by adding buttermilk instead of milk to smooth out the dense cake batter. When I baked it for the second time, I added only milk. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll stick with the buttermilk in my Mawa cake recipe.

Well cakes made of buttermilk tend be more lighter in texture and gets finer crumbs and more tender than the cakes made of whole milk which is more dense in texture. So if you want to have a dense cake stick to the milk in the recipe or if you want a lighter cake buttermilk will do the work.

Here I’ve used a bunt cake pan, you can use any cake pan or muffin cup of your choice.

Ingredients: (12-15 slices)

100 gms Khoya (crumbled)

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 cup all purpose flour

3 eggs

70 gms butter (unsalted)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup buttermilk

1 cup white sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cardamom powder

1/2 tsp salt to taste

Chopped and sliced Pistachios & Almond for topping

For the glaze:

Pinch of Cardamom powder

Few strands of saffron

3 tbsp confectioners sugar (icing sugar)

1 1/2 tsp cream

Method:

Preheat the Oven to 170 degree Celsius for 10 mins.

Prepare the baking pan (I’ve used bunt cake pan) with parchment paper and also grease it with butter.

In a bowl sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom powder and keep it aside.

In a separate bowl whisk the eggs with the sugar until fluffy consistency. Add the softened butter and oil and whisk again. Now add the crumbled Khoya and whisk further.

Now incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet mixture adding one cup at a time. Blend with the spatula. Add the butter milk and fold gently. The batter should be of thick flowing consistency.

Pour it into the lined baking pan.

Now strategically place the sliced or slivered almonds on top of the cake batter. Make sure to drizzle a bit of flour on the sliced almonds before adding on the cake batter. This’ll prevent the almond not to sink in the bottom while baking.

Bake it in the preheated oven of 170 degree Celsius for 35 or 40 mins.

In the meantime prepare the glaze by mixing saffron strands, ground cardamom , icing sugar and cream. Whisk it well to a fine flowing consistency. Keep aside.

The cake is done when the bamboo skewer inserted comes out Clean. Let the cake sit in the baking pan for 5 to 6 minutes.

Remove it from the pan, let it cool. Drizzle the glaze mixture on top of the cake and sprinkle the chopped pistachios. Slice it and enjoy with your cup of tea or coffee.

Notes: Refrigerate the leftover cake in an airtight container for 5 days max or consume within 3 days in room temperature.