Pantua

pantua or pantoah, Bengali sweets made from dough based on flour and sugar mixed with other ingredients (milk powder, besan flour, fresh curd cheese, coconut, sweet potato, green banana) and flavoured with cardamoms. The mixture is shaped into crescents or logs and deep fried in ghee, then soaked in a rose-flavoured syrup. A sweet of this type, shaped into balls, each one containing a sugared cardamom seed or other candy, is known as a ladikanee or ‘Lady Canning’, apparently in honour of the wife of the 19th-century Viceroy of India Lord Canning.