Malasadas in Honolulu: what they are, what to order and what to avoid

Overview

A malasada is a ball of rich, yeasted dough, heavy on egg and butter, fried until the outside sets into a thin, crackly shell and the inside stays soft and open, then rolled straight away in granulated sugar. It has no hole. The whole point is the contrast between the crunch of dry sugar and an interior that is barely set, and that contrast lasts minutes, not hours, which shapes everything else in this article.

It is not Honolulu’s own invention, and it is not even Hawaiian in origin. The malasada came from Madeira and the Azores with the Portuguese contract labourers recruited for the sugar plantations from the late 1870s onwards. In those islands it was, and still is, a Carnival food: a Catholic household fried rich dough on the last day before Lent to use up the butter, sugar and lard the fast would forbid. That is why Shrove Tuesday is known across Hawaiʻi as Malasada Day, and why the dish belongs to every island rather than to this city alone. Honolulu’s claim is one of scale: it is where most people on the islands live, so it is where the most malasadas are fried and the most bakeries compete over them.

The name is usually explained as Portuguese for “badly cooked” or “under-done”, a nod to the soft center. It is a plausible reading and a widely repeated one, but treat it as the usual explanation rather than a settled etymology.

What changed on the islands is frequency. The usual account credits a family bakery in the 1950s with selling them every day instead of once a year, and the rest of the city followed. Whatever the exact story, the malasada stopped being a Lenten treat and became an ordinary morning or mid-afternoon thing to buy by the box.

What to order

Start with the plain one, sometimes called original: dough, oil, sugar, nothing else. It is the baseline every counter is judged on, and it is the one where freshness shows most, because there is no filling to hide behind.

The coatings are where the islands added something of their own:

• sugar — plain granulated, the Portuguese default.
• cinnamon sugar — the gentlest variation, and the one most visitors already know from doughnuts.
• li hing — powdered li hing mui, a salty-sweet-sour dried plum seasoning that came to Hawaiʻi through Chinese immigration. It turns the sugar pink and tart. If you order one thing you cannot get elsewhere, this is it, and it divides people.

Then the fillings, piped in after frying (one well-known bakery sells the filled version under its own trade name, the puff). The usual ones:

• haupia — Hawaiian coconut pudding, firm and lightly sweet. The most local choice.
• custard — vanilla custard, the safe one.
• dobash — chocolate pudding, named after the island chocolate chiffon cake of the same name.
• lilikoi — passion fruit, usually as a sharp curd or cream; the best counterweight to the sugar outside.
• guava — sweet and pink, sometimes as a jam, sometimes as a cream.

A filled malasada is a dessert; a plain one is closer to bread. If you are trying more than one, have the plain first, while your palate can still tell eggy dough from frying oil.

Two harmless ways to mark yourself out: asking for one “with a hole”, and asking for it to be warmed up later. Neither offends anyone; both misunderstand the object. Ordering by the dozen, on the other hand, is entirely local. Boxes of malasadas are what people take to the office, to a beach day, to a family visit.

What to avoid

The sugar tells you how old it is. Fresh from the fryer, the coating is dry, white and loose; you can hear it. As a malasada cools and sits, steam from the dough melts the sugar into a damp, translucent film that clings to the surface. If the sugar looks wet or glassy, it was fried a while ago, and nothing about the filling will bring it back.

The second tell is the tray. A counter frying to order, where you wait a few minutes and receive something too hot to bite, is the ideal. A heaped tray under a heat lamp is a different product: the shell softens as it sits.

Weight is the third. A good malasada feels light for its size. One that is dense, oily when you squeeze it, or leaves a dark ring on the paper bag was fried in oil that was not hot enough or was fried too long ago and has drunk its own grease.

Be wary of malasadas sitting on convenience-store counters, which have usually been fried hours earlier. They are not fakes, exactly, but they are the day-after version, and judging the dish by one is like judging toast that has been left on a plate overnight. The same goes for the malasada as a breakfast-buffet item, where it is one tray among twenty and has usually been waiting since the buffet opened.

Finally, a ring doughnut sold under the name is simply a doughnut. The shape matters: no hole, and a dough noticeably richer and more yellow inside than an ordinary yeast doughnut.

Practicalities

Expect roughly $1.50 to $3 each, plain at the bottom of that range and filled at the top, with a dozen costing proportionally less at most counters. Something far below that is likely the pre-packed version; something well above it is usually a speciality filling or a novelty, not a better malasada.

The day to know is Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, which falls in February or early March. On Malasada Day bakeries fry in enormous quantities, lines form before opening and run all day, and many shops take advance orders by the dozen for collection. If you want a quiet first malasada, avoid that day; if you want to see the tradition at full strength, go early on it.

The other famous occasion is the Punahou school carnival on Oʻahu, an annual fundraiser held on a Friday and Saturday in early February and free to enter, whose malasada stand is a local institution in its own right. It is a school event, not a shop, and the line is part of it.

On any other day, buying is simple: a counter, a choice of coating or filling, a paper bag or a pink box. Counter service carries no table-service tipping expectation, though a jar by the till is common. Cards are widely taken at bakeries; fair stalls and pop-up stands are more likely to want cash.

Eat it on the spot. A malasada is at its best within ten minutes of leaving the oil and is merely pleasant after an hour. If you are carrying a box to someone, carry it there directly, open the lid so the steam escapes, and do not seal it in a bag in a hot car.