Mawa cake is a rich and delicious Indian cake, hailing from the utterly charming Irani cafes of Bombay. Mine is a tweaked version of the beloved Parsi dessert, widely popular in Western India. I was introduced to this delight by my dear friend Vaishali, whose roots are from Pune. We used to enjoy this cake during tea time in our backyards when we were neighbors. This recipe quickly became our traditional cake for all our birthdays, and my Simba absolutely loved it too.
Mawa (Khoa/Khoya)Cake
Mawa Cake is a decadent and delicious cake, it is not overly-sweet and a perfect accompaniment for tea/coffee. This cake has a unique texture due to the presence of mawa in it. The swarming of Irani cafes in West India by the Irani immigrants popularised the delicious dessert. Not only the history, but the reason and objective behind the creation of this cake has also been a mystery till today.
Ingredients
- 2 cups All-purpose flour / Bread flour
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- 1 & ½ cups Mawa (Khoa / Khoya) – dried milk solids finely grated
- 1 & ⅛ cup Sugar Make it 1 & ¼ if you like it sweeter
- 1 & ¼ stick Unsalted butter Room temperature
- 4 Eggs Room temperature
- 1 cup Milk Room temperature
- ¼ cup Walnuts (chopped) optional
- ¼ cup Chocolate chips optional
Instructions
Now, let's mix and bake!
- Preheat oven to 350℉. Lightly grease the sides of a cake pan (I use a bundt pan because it looks beautiful when baked) with softened unsalted butter and dust it with all purpose flour. This step is necessary so the cake comes out easily from the pan.
- In a bowl, stir together the dry ingredients all-purpose flour and baking powder.
- Break eggs carefully in a bowl and keep them aside.
- I normally use my mixer with the flex edge attachment to mix the cake batter. You can also use a hand blender.
- In the bowl, cream together the softened butter along with sugar for about 3 mins so they combine well.
- The next step is to add grated mawa and cream them together for couple mins.
- Drop in eggs, one at a time into the mixer and let it combine together.
- Then add half the dry ingredients, once it gets mixed, slowly add milk so it does not splatter outside the bowl. Then add the remaining half of the dry ingredients and let it mix gently for a minute.
- Fold in the chopped walnuts and chocolate chips. Transfer the mix to the greased pan.
- Bake for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. A well baked cake will leave the sides of the cake pan. Let it cool in the pan for 15 minutes and finish cooling on a wire rack.
- Slice and serve ONLY with a scoop of French Vanilla Ice cream 🙂
Tips
- Use room temperature ingredients (butter, milk, eggs) when making the cake.
- This cake can be enjoyed as a tea-time snack, or as a dessert after dinner with a scoop of Vanilla ice-cream.
- It tastes best as it is (no frosting please) when warmed.
- Normally, they add pistachios but we are a walnutty family 🙂
Thank you Pushkar. Keep me posted when you make.
i have heard about this cake so much , cannot wait to try out the recipe and make it . will let you know how it came up