Nakshi Pakon Pitha: An Easy Home Recipe with Flour, Milk and Ghee

Of all the pitha made in Bangladeshi homes in winter, nakshi pakon pitha is among the most attractive to look at, and it tastes as good as it looks. On 21 January 2025 the lifestyle desk of Jagonews24 published a simple recipe for making it at home with flour, milk and ghee. The method comes down to cutting patterns into a cooked dough, deep-frying the cakes and soaking them in a cardamom-scented sugar syrup.

Banglapedia describes nakshi pitha as a rice cake decorated with a variety of designs, made in both villages and towns of Bangladesh, and calls it both a culinary art and an important women's folk art. In the traditional method, dough is made by cooking atap (unboiled) rice flour and is rolled out, and designs of plants, creepers and flowers are pricked out with date thorns, hairpins, needles or jute sticks. Patterned moulds of clay, stone, wood or metal are also used. The cakes are then fried and soaked in sugar syrup.

According to Banglapedia, women of greater Mymensingh are particularly known for their skill with the designs, and the cakes take their names from their patterns, among them shankhalata, kajallata, hijalpata, padmadighi, sagardighi and jamaimukh. Nakshi pitha is made for many social and religious occasions, including Eid, puja festivals, Shab-e-Barat, weddings and Nabanna, the harvest festival. Banglapedia's article on pitha also lists pakan among the pithas known across the country.

The Jagonews24 recipe notes that pakon pitha itself comes in several kinds, including nakshi pakon, sundari pakon, mug pakon, daler pakon and sujir pakon, of which nakshi pakon is quite popular.

• Flour (maida): 2 cups
• Milk: 2 cups
• Salt: 1 teaspoon
• Egg yolk: 1
• Biscuit crumbs: 2 tablespoons
• Ghee: 2 tablespoons (plus a little to grease your hands while kneading)
• Oil for deep-frying

• Sugar: 2 cups
• Water: 3 cups
• Green cardamom: 3 pods

• Heat the milk, ghee and salt together in a pan.
• When the milk comes to the boil, add the flour and mix well, then cover and leave on a very low flame for 5 minutes.
• Take the dough off the heat and let it cool a little. Grease your hands with ghee and knead it well for at least 10 minutes.
• Add the egg yolk and biscuit crumbs and knead for a while longer.
• Shape the dough into rounds or egg shapes, then make the designs with a pitha mould or a spoon.
• Deep-fry on a low flame until crisp, then leave to cool.
• In another pan, boil the water, sugar and cardamom together for 5 minutes to make the syrup.
• Pour the syrup into a wide, large dish, because the pitha swell further as they soak. Add the pitha while the syrup is still slightly warm and leave them for 4 to 5 hours.
• Take care that the pitha do not stick to one another, then serve.

Nakshi pakon can also be made with atap rice flour, the traditional base, instead of wheat flour. A recipe in Prothom Alo's lifestyle pages on 14 December 2020 used 2 cups of atap rice flour, half a cup of mung dal, 2 cups of milk, 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of ghee for the dough, with 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of water for the syrup. The milk and water are boiled together, a little salt and the rice flour are stirred in, and the pan is covered for a few minutes. The mung dal is dry-roasted, boiled and ground, then kneaded into the dough with the ghee. The dough is rolled out and cut, patterned with a date thorn and a toothpick, deep-fried over a medium flame and dipped in the syrup.

Photo: Mmrsafy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Banglapedia (Nakshi Pitha and Pitha entries), Prothom Alo