Kozhakattai

It is friday - time to prepare a special sweet for God :)

This time I wanted to keep the sweet simple, subtle and good to eat. The sweet that immediately came in to my mind was Kozhakkattai

The traditional version of the sweet is somewhat time taking, but I found a simple way to make it.

So here is what we need to make 12 kozhakattais (3.5" long);

Rice powder - 1 cup (I prefer to use the Nirapara brand)

Water (boiling) - 1 1/3 cup

Salt - 2 pinches

For the filling:

Fresh coconut chopped - 1 cup

Cardamom - 3

Sugar - 2/3 cup (I used the brown sugar of cane that we get here - it tastes similar to jaggery)

Water - 1/4 cup

1. Boil the water and pour this into a bowl containing the rice flour. Mix this nicely with a spoon. Allow it to cool enough for kneading it into a smooth dough.

2. While the above is cooling, grind the chopped coconut and cardamoms to a rough paste.

3. Heat a pan, pour in the sugar and water in it nicely stir it and then leave it for 3-4 minutes to boil to a nice consistency when the sugar syrup is not too watery add in the coconut and cardamom paste to it and mix it nicely till you reach a consistency where you can make balls out of the filling. Remove it from the heat, cool it.

4. Now knead the rice dough nicely, so that the dough is smooth.

5. Now heat the pressure cooker with 1 inch level water, make the idly plates ready by greasing them very lightly with oil.

6. Divide the dough into 12 equal balls and the filling also the same way.

7. Take a ball of dough start applying pressure in the middle part of the dough and slowly try to flatten it out into a curved semicircle. (The next time I prepare I will prepare a photo tutorial as to how to make a easy kozhakattai)

8. Now take a ball of the filling flatten it into a little oblong shape and place it inside the curved semicircular dough and close the open ends. In any of this process make sure that the dough does not stick to you hand, you can always keep a bowl of water beside.

9. Place each of the kozhakattais on the idli plate and steam them for 7-8 minutes. Serve them after it cools.

Kozhakattais for Lord Ganesha :)

Thanks for visiting my blog :)