Mithai’s modern avatar   

Can you recall the last time you received or gifted a box of mithai on a special occasion because, in the past decade, most of us have veered towards brownies, cupcakes or chocolates that are considered more hip?

However, Indian mithai is getting a millennial makeover as many game-changers take the humble sweet a notch above its traditional avatar and give it an innovative twist with some Western pastry methods. Think champagne laddoos, apple pie barfi, Nutella peda, kafi paak, kulfi in a waffle cone and much more to allure the younger generation. Some of the brands who have changed the scene are Khoya, Gur Chini, Bombay Sweet Shop, Arq, Nihira, Bhawan and Berfila.

What prompted them to start?

They saw a vacuum in a country where people hesitated to order mithai because it wasn’t considered classy but where every occasion is celebrated with sweets. Needless to say, mithai became a wide-open space for rebranding.

Khoya Mithai was among the first players to give mithai a luxury tag. Launched in 2016, they have stuck to traditional sweets like milk cake, coconut barfi and kesar peda but present it in a far more appealing manner. “Mithai had lost the confidence of the consumer in terms of quality and packaging – the experience was not there, ” according to Founder & Director Sid Mathur. So what followed was some exquisite packaging that literally gives a new lease of life to mithai.

Every brand has taken this seriously and is not only making the boxes look pretty and classy but also environmentally-friendly - Arq for example uses recyclable packages. Using top-quality ingredients is another focus area. Mathur recalls that the biggest compliment for him was when one customer had a bite of the milk cake and said, “Alwar ki yaad aa gayi.”

Experiment is the name of the game

Experimenting with flavour, these new-age mithai makers are coming up with concoctions that nobody had heard of. Bite into a simple peda and it is stuffed with blueberry while a humble motichoor laddoo has a wasabi centre or is laced with champagne while halwa gets spiked with Old Monk rum.

Bombay Sweet Shop opened in March this year with the idea of bringing back the magic of mithai. “We did our research and realised that Indian mithai is as nuanced and as intricate as French patisserie. So we took elements of mithai and made it modern, ” according to Sameer Seth, Founder & CEO of Hunger Inc Hospitality. Its repertoire includes ghevar tarts, laddoos made of rum and dark chocolate called Drunken Motichoor and the Ferrero Rocker Laddoo that’s a besan laddoo with hazelnut. Seth adds, “I do not need to tell anyone what a laddoo is – what I can do is make it more interesting for them. People are loving Kafi paak and the chocolate motichoor laddoos.”

Similarly, when Arshya Aggarwal saw that nobody was doing liquor laddoos, she promptly launched Nihira in Gurgaon and now people cannot get enough of the whiskey, red wine and champagne laddoos that it offers.

And experimenting doesn’t stop there.it also means tweaking the sweetness and using sugar substitutes because many people find mithai too sweet and heavy. Bhawan has toned down the sugar content and does not go over the top with ghee, which of course is the pure version. “We use alternate grains wherever possible and are working towards gluten-free and sugar-free options, ” owner Kainaz Contractor says.

Healthier sugar substitutes like stevia, jaggery and honey are making their way into mithais and some brands even offer a gluten-free range. The ingredients are sourced locally, they are organic and also there is no artificial flavouring. Gur Chini uses stevia, honey, brown sugar, sugarcane and date palm to make the mithai and even has low sugar and no sugar collection. The idea is not to limit mithai to festive occasions but encourage people to indulge in it all year round and also offer them a new experience when they come to buy it. That is why Khoya, Gur Chini and Bombay Sweet Shop are a far cry from the typical “halwai” shops we know of.

Suave and sexy with a ‘mithai bar’, gifting counter, chikki counter and cafe, at Bombay Sweet Shop you can peek into the kitchen from the huge glass window. “We wanted to build a Willy Wonka’s Mithai Factory – by bringing everything in the open, ” says Seth. “Typically in a mithai shop you only interact at the counter and do not see the entire process that goes into making that mithai so we wanted to break that barrier.” Due to Covid-19 they had to shut shop but plan to reopen soon. At the moment they are doing takeaways and deliveries.

Who’s buying it and what’s the pricing?

There are many takers for this - luxury brands like Burberry, Louis Vuitton and hampers presented at the Koffee with Karan show. Gur Chini and Khoya supplied for the weddings of Isha and Akash Ambani. Of course one pays steeply for such gourmet and artisanal stuff. Most of them sell by the box and not by the kilo and the minimum box is of four pieces. So a box of four liquor laddoos at Nihira will leave your wallet lighter by Rs. 800 and this goes up to Rs. 3000 for a box of 16.

But for those who love a touch of something modern, but do not want to abandon the centuries-old mithai for a box of chocolates, this could be the way to go.

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