Vark, Warakh, Silver Leaves or varaka is any foil composed of a pure metal, typically silver, sometimes gold, used for garnishing sweets in South Asian cuisine. The silver leaves is edible, though flavorless. Varak is made by pounding silver into a sheet a few micrometres, and backed with paper for support; this paper is peeled away before use. It is extremely brittle and breaks into smaller pieces if touched. Extra thin leaves get stuck on hand and then it vanished due to excessively low thickness (due to thickness close to inter-atomic distance). Vark sheets are laid or rolled over some South Asian sweets. Edible silver and gold leaves on sweets, confectionery and desserts is not unique to the Indian subcontinent; other regions such as Japan and Europe have long used precious metal foils as food cover and additive, including specialty drinks such as Danziger Goldwasser. It is considerable that some technologies evolved for the production of silver leaves i.e. in Russia, German, China and India . Technologies like beating over sheets of Black special treated paper, Polyester sheets coated with food grade Calcium powder are used instead of Ox-guts . Estimated consumption of Vark is 275 tons ( according to BWC-Beauty without cruelty data ) annually . Hindu and Jain religions care much about whether a food is vegetarian or not, thus the market of India has turned and converted into vegetarian processed silver leaves.
Delhi, India
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