Instructions: I have vivid childhood memories of the sweet-maker in our neighborhood standing behind the counter next to his colossal iron saucepans, slowly stirring milk until it shriveled and began to look tender.

In India, such shops are a feature of most towns. And, in addition to selling sweets known as mithai, many serve the ancillary function of selling mawa, a semisolid byproduct of milk that is a key ingredient in many of Indias milk-based sweets.

As a child, I found salvation in the form of sweets such as gulab jamuns, sandesh and gajar ka halwa only a short walk away. But in a new country, it is not often that simple. Even the bravest of palates longs for the comfort of the familiar when it is time for dessert. After I polish off exotic dinners here and am handed the dessert menu, I begin to long for an Indian sweet.

Making mawa, also known as khoya, can be a tedious task, requiring hours of patient stirring. And because the whole milk available in most U.S. grocery stores is not as creamy as milk in India, the process can take even longer. So I decided to explore shortcuts.

There are some stores in the Bay Area that sell mawa, places such as Lovely Sweets in Fremont. Owner Ajay Kumar, who shares his recipe (at left) said, The chefs in Lovely make mawa six to seven hours daily, as without good mawa, one cannot produce good fresh sweets.

But store-bought mawa tends to be more expensive than homemade substitutes, and you need a reliable supply close to home. Fortunately, healthy and simple substitutes for mawa are readily available in most grocery stores. And the resulting mithai is just as good as the original, if not better.

As with most aspects of cooking, some of my discoveries came from friends and family, while others resulted from trial and error. Since different sweets require different consistencies of mawa, the consistency of the substitutes should vary likewise.

Mawa generally is classified as loose, solid or granulated. For loose mawa, a good substitute is sweetened condensed milk or whipped cream. Solid mawa can be replicated with ricotta cheese, and granulated mawa with milk powder or milk-mawa powder, which can be found in Indian stores. If you want to experiment, you could use just about any milk product with a sweet or neutral base.

My task, however, was a bit more daunting because I wanted to re-create mawae ki kachori that is famous in Rajasthan. These sweet round desserts with mawa centers are covered with flour dough and then dipped in sugar syrup after deep-frying. I soon realized that the original deep-fried form would take a long time to re-create and would contain more calories than I wanted.

I chose to bake instead of fry and borrowed insights about working with phyllo gained by nutrition major Fatima Altakrouri, who makes baklava. I replaced the filling of baklava, composed primarily of ground walnuts and cinnamon, with mawa, successfully creating my own version of mawae ki kachori.

Of course, I still missed the original. But may I share a secret? I meant for it to be that way. Radhika Sharma is a freelance writer in Milpitas. Contact her

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