Malasadas

A malasada is a fried dough ball — no hole, no filling in the original form, just an enriched dough of flour, eggs, milk, butter, and yeast, dropped into hot oil and fried until the outside is golden and the inside is soft, pillowy, and just barely set. It comes out of the oil and goes immediately into a bowl of granulated sugar, which clings to the hot surface and dissolves slightly at the edges. It is eaten warm. It is always better warm. The name means poorly cooked in Portuguese — mal assada — a reference to the soft, yielding interior that seems underdone until you understand that the interior is the point.

The malasada comes from the Azores, the Portuguese archipelago sitting in the Atlantic roughly 1,500 kilometers west of Lisbon. São Miguel, the largest island, is most closely associated with the pastry’s origin, though versions exist across the islands. The Azores were settled by Portugal beginning in the 15th century and developed a food culture shaped by the same Catholic calendar that structured daily life throughout the Portuguese world. Malasadas are Carnival food — made on Fat Tuesday, the day before Lent begins, when households used up their remaining stores of butter, eggs, and sugar before the fasting season. The logic is the same as for fritule in Croatia, kroštule in Dalmatia, beignets in New Orleans — eat the rich things now because they will be prohibited soon. The malasada is the Azorean answer to that universal pre-Lenten calculation.

The dough is simple and the technique is straightforward, which meant the malasada traveled well. In 1878, Portuguese laborers from the Azores and Madeira began arriving in Hawaii to work on the sugarcane plantations, recruited specifically for their experience with tropical agriculture. They brought their food with them — the practical, sustaining things that could be made from basic pantry ingredients in a plantation camp kitchen. The malasada was among them. Initially it remained a community food, made in large batches on Fat Tuesday and shared across the plantation camps regardless of ethnic background. That sharing is part of how it spread beyond the Portuguese community into Hawaiian food culture more broadly.

The transition from community food to island institution happened in 1953, when Leonard’s Bakery in Honolulu put malasadas on their menu and began making them fresh throughout the day rather than only before Lent. The decision to sell them year-round rather than seasonally changed what they were — a Carnival food became an everyday food, and the Fat Tuesday association became Fat Tuesday plus every other day. Leonard’s malasadas are made to order, handed over in a paper bag still warm from the fryer, and the line outside the bakery on any given morning suggests the strategy was correct.

Hawaii has since made the malasada fully its own. Fillings that did not exist in the Azorean original — coconut haupia, passion fruit custard, chocolate, guava — are now standard at Hawaiian bakeries, and the filled version has become as iconic as the plain sugared one. Fat Tuesday in Hawaii is called Malasada Day, not Mardi Gras, which is the clearest possible signal that the pastry has completed its assimilation. The Azorean original is still made in the islands — plain, sugared, eaten warm — and it is still the reference point. Everything else is a conversation with that version, not a replacement for it.

Portuguese Influence

Regional Roots