Mawa cake is a delicious Indian tea cake with mawa or milk solids as main ingredient. This is an egg free, super rich, dense cake studded with nuts and flavored with cardamom. This cake is a delight in every bite, not overly sweet, perfect for celebrations like Diwali and easy to make too. Here is how to make best eggless cake with mawa just like the ones from Irani or Parsi bakeries.
Preheat oven to 350 F or 180 C. Position a rack in the middle of your oven. Grease an 6 or 7 inch round baking tin with baking spray or some butter. Dust with some flour or line with a piece of parchment. Set aside. In a medium mixing bowl, sieve plain flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and cardamom powder and mix well until well combined. Set aside the flour mixture.
Take crumbled mawa along with 2 tablespoons milk in a food processor jar and also add a few strands of saffron. Process for a few seconds.
Next step preparing the wet ingredients. Combine soft room temperature butter and sugar in a mixing bowl. Using an electric beater or paddle attachment of the stand mixer or hand held whisk, beat the sugar butter mixture until light and creamy. Add the pulsed mawa, rose water and mix.
Now add 1/2 of the flour mixture to wet ingredients and mix. Add 1/2 cup milk and mix. Now add the remaining flour mixture and milk. Mix until combined, do not over mix.
Add roasted and chopped pistachios to the cake batter and fold gently.
Pour the batter to the prepared cake tin and tap once or twice.
Place in the preheated oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. You can also bake bake mawa cupcakes.Once done, let the cake cool for 5 minutes. Gently invert the pan and tranfer the cake to a cooling rack. Let the cake cool thoroughly. Slice and serve mawa cake with tea.
Notes
1. Make sure the butter is soft and at room temperature. 2. You can use almonds instead of pistachios 3. You can try the same cake with whole wheat flour