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Madatha Kaja served onn a black plate
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Madatha Kaja Recipe - Khaja Sweet | Kaja Sweet Recipe Video

Madatha Kaja Recipe - Khaja or Kaja is a delicious traditional sweet from the Telugu cuisine prepared with maida (plain flour). It has crispy & flaky layers soaked in sugar syrup. 
Prep Time30 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Total Time50 minutes
Course: Dessert / Sweet / Festival Sweet, Sweet / Festival Recipe
Cuisine: Indian (Andhra)
Keyword: madatha kaja, khaja sweet, khaja recipe, tapeswaram madatha kaja,
Servings: -29
Author: Padma Veeranki

Ingredients

For the Dough:

  • 1 Cup Maida Plain Flour
  • 1/4 tsp Salt
  • 2 to 3 tbsp Ghee Clarified Butter

For Sugar Syrup:

  • 1 Cup Sugar-1 cup
  • 1/2 Cup Water
  • 1/4 tsp Cardamom Powder
  • 1 tsp Lemon Juice Optional

Other Ingredients:

  • 2 tbsp Corn Flour
  • Oil for Deep Frying

Instructions

Let's make the Dough:

  • In a large bowl take 1 cup maida and add 3 teaspoons ghee.
  • Crumble and mix well. When you gather the flour, should make a tight ball and hold intact.
  • Now, add water gradually (approximately ¼ cup) and knead to a smooth and soft dough.
  • Cover the dough and rest for 30 minutes.

Sugar Syrup:

  • Meanwhile, make sugar syrup. For this dissolve 1 cup sugar in 1/2 water and boil until you get a single string consistency. Turn off the heat, add 1/4 tsp cardamom powder and 1 teaspoon lemon juice (Prevents crystallisation). Cover & set aside.

Shaping Kaja:

  • After 30 min. dust the dough with maida and roll with the rolling pin.
  • Roll as thin as possible dusting maida as required.
  • Sprinkle, corn flour and spread evenly.
  • Start to roll tightly from one end.
  • dust corn flour as you roll to prevent layers from sticking to each other.
  • Seal the edges at the end brushing with some water.
  • Now, roll the cylinder tight back and forth to remove any air gaps if present.
  • Cut out the thin edges.
  • Cut it into 1 inch pieces and slightly flatten the edges of each kaja to for an oblong shape.

Deep Frying:

  • Heat enough oil over medium heat.
  • Once oil is hot enough, reduce the heat and add few kajas.
  • Fry over medium low till they turn golden brown and crispy.
  • Remove them and immediately drop the fried kajas into the warm sugar syrup.
  • Soak them in the syrup for 5 minutes until you fry the net batch of kajas.
  • Remove soaked kajas and place onn a wire mesh to drain out excess syrup.

Recipe Video

Notes

  • You can also add 1 tablespoon curd while making the dough but it is optional.
  • You can also add a pinch of baking soda while making the dough. This will make it crisp but you can achieve the same effect by using enough ghee to rub well into the flour & knead the dough properly.
  • The sweet shops mostly use dalda and not ghee to get this flaky effect.
  • You can also use mix 2 tbsp rice flour to 2 tbsp ghee (or dalda) and spread this paste on the rolled chapati instead of corn flour for getting the layers.
  • Do not over boil the sugar syrup otherwise the sugar syrup hardens after the kajas cool down and also kajas will not absort syrup properly if it's too thick. Turn off heat before it reaches string consistency.
  • Add a few drops of lemon juice will prevent crystallisation of the sugar syrup. Alternatively, you can add alum (Patika in telugu), which works perfectly. Sweet shops use this.
  • Add piping hot kajas immediately to warm sugar syrup. 
  • Soak the kajas in warm syrup so that it can soak up a lot of syrup to penetrate through every layer. If you don't want them too sweet, remove them in a minute after soaking.