Unniyappam

Unniyappam is a small round snack made from rice, jaggery, banana, roasted coconut pieces, roasted sesame seeds, ghee and cardamom powder fried in ghee or oil. Variations of this organic and spongy fried batter using jackfruit preserves instead of banana is common. A lot of recipes say to add baking powder or rice powder or jaggery powder for time saving but this recipe doesn't require much time and tastes awesome.

Ingredients :

• 1 cup rice (my 1 cup rice = 140 grams. I use basmati which I use for regular cooking)

• 1 (95grams) of jaggery cube (if you keep it in the refrigerator, then keep it out before an hour)

• 1/4 cup water

• A pinch of cardamom powder

• 1/2 a medium banana

• 1 tsp white sesame seeds (dry fry a little) (optional)

• ½ teaspoon cumin powder

• ½ teaspoon dry ginger powder

• A pinch of salt

• 1 tbsp coconut, cut in small pieces (fried in ghee) (optional)

• Coconut oil and Ghee both

• Unniyappam Mold

Method :

• Wash and soak the rice (each type of rice would need different soaking times). The well soaked rice will brittle in hands once pressed.

• Melt the jaggery cube in little water on slow flame. Don't add the whole water at once instead add 2 tablespoon at a time. In my experience whole 1/4 cup water is not required.

• Cool the melted jaggery and cut the banana into pieces. Half a banana will be enough or else the appams will be too soft and break it.

• Grind the rice with banana and melted jaggery. Add the cumin powder and dry ginger powder while grinding. Adjust the consistency by adding little water at time.

• Add the cardamom powder, pinch of salt and then the optional coconut pieces or the sesame seeds. I don't put both of them together.

• Add 1 tsp melted ghee to the batter and mix well. Rest the batter for half an hour time. The batter should be of pouring consistency neither too runny nor too tight.

• Add half a teaspoon coconut oil and half teaspoon ghee in each cup of the mold and heat it to medium to high heat. You can use full coconut oil or full ghee, however you like.

• Pour the batter in each cup using a large spoon or a ladle. Fill till 3/4 of the cup. Reduce the heat to medium and let it cook.

• Using the help of two spoons flip each of them around. The batter would be still runny and not cooked fully while flipping. Let it be like that only. Do not wait it to cook fully as this way the unniyappams will be round both sides by the time it is fully cooked as in the photo above.

• Flip once more and cook for a minute. Take a skewer and use this to remove the unniyappams from the mold. Put them on a tissue to remove the excess oil/ghee.

• Check if any mold requires oil/ ghee again and refill them and then once hot, put the second batch of the batter. Mix the batter each time before pouring also keep it covered when not in use.

Jaggery Cube

This are the jaggery cubes I generally use. Use only the dark brown color jaggery. Do not use the white/ light brown color jaggery. The light color is because of the minerals presence in it and it affects and changes the flavor too.

Jaggery Powder

A lot of people use jaggery powder but I don't prefer them. 1) a lot times they have sugar crystals in them which again changes the taste and 2) they aren't cost effective.

Unniyappam Mold

Traditional Unniyappam Chatti or Molds are made of cast iron and easily available on Amazon or any South Indian stores. Now a days we use the kind you see in the picture, non stick and slightly smaller in size, again available to buy. I use these only as they are easy to handle.