Neyyappam ( Ney meaning ghee and appam meaning pancakes) or Unniappam (Unni meaning small in Malayalam) is a Kerala specialty offered to Lord Ganesha. It’s a pancake made of rice flour, coconut and jaggery fried in ghee. The house would be filled with the aroma of jaggery and ghee when my Mother used to make it and we would wait restlessly to dig our teeth into the soft delicacies till ‘naivedyam’ (offering to God) was offered to God. You need a special vessel for making unniappams called ‘appakara’. I’ve taken an image from google for easy reference.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1 cup jaggery
- 1/2 cup water
- 1 banana mashed to a smooth paste
- 2 cardamom pods powdered
- ¼ cup grated coconut
- 1 cup ghee
- 1 cup cooking oil
Method:
- Heat jaggery with water and cook till melted completely.
- Leave it aside to cool.
- Add rice flour to the jaggery mixture.
- Add the mashed banana, coconut and powdered cardamom and mix well
- For softer unniapams keep the batter aside for 2-3 hours
- Mix the ghee and oil and keep it aside. Frying the unniappams only in ghee will require them to be consumed the very same day or else they’ll become hard.
- Heat the Appakara and add the ghee-oil mixture about halfway upto the indentations of the Appakara
- Pour the batter in each indentation and cook for about 2 minutes till they are easy to turn upside down.
- Cook till both sides are golden brown. Insert a knitting needle into the unniappam to check it it’s cooked. If the needle comes out clean it’s cooked.
- Add more ghee-oil if required in the indentations and cook all the unniappams.
Preparation time: 45 minutes
Makes: 15 unniappams