Mawa Cake

Fluffy, buttery and delicious, Mawa Cakes hold a special place in the hearts of all Mumbaikars. In a sea of Maharashtrian desserts like Modak and Puran Poli, this Parsi specialty has triumphantly held its own in the bustling coastal metropolis for over a hundred years.

Mawa Cakes have been around for as long as Iranian bakeries themselves. Yet, it is difficult to determine the mystery. Every Iranian cafe wants a piece of the Mawa Cake origin story. Bandra’s B Merwan famously claims that Mawa Cake was a result of an experiment to reduce the wastage of resources. Since pasteurised milk was difficult to source, and refrigerators weren’t a common sight, the cafe resorted to boiling the milk over and over again to retain its freshness. This repetitive boiling left a coating of dried milk around the saucepan’s edges. The owner decided to experiment with this leftover dried milk, which came to be known as mawa or khoya. Thus was born the humble sweet bread.

Another story suggests that Mawa Cakes are a variation of a Zoroastrian dessert named Kumas. When Iranian refugees settled in India, they adapted the dish with locally available ingredients like khoya and cardamom to conceive a new variant of a beloved classic.

The 1920s saw a sudden mushrooming of Iranian cafes in and around the erstwhile Bombay. While the rich and famous dined at elite, private lounges, Parsi cafes proved to be a boon for the large number of working professionals who had migrated to the city for work opportunities. The highly affordable Mawa Cakes became a breakfast staple, along with a steaming glass of Irani Chai.

Even 100 years later, the fundamentals of the Mawa Cake remain the same. Sure, every cafe has its own version of this confectionery. But the ingredients and the method of preparation are almost identical at every cafe. The cakes are made by folding mawa into a mixture of flour, baking powder, salt and a pinch of cardamom. After the dry ingredients are mixed, it is beaten together with a sizeable portion of butter, sugar, milk and a few eggs. Using an electric beater for this step gives the cupcakes their characteristic melt-in-the-mouth consistency.