Rava unniappam (Sooji mini pancakes)

I can't take it any more. I am reading about so many recipes with this unniyappam pan and so many different names. But what happened to the sweet delicacy called unniappam (or unniyappam or sweet mini pancakes) which I love, made with the same pan?

Small tea-shops you find at every corner in Kerala smell of this in the evening tea-time. They make it and store in large glass cases to test small kids, I think.

You can be groomed to become a well-behaved child every single day, but you know, you can’t help but ask your parent to buy you this, when you pass the tea-shop and will end up crying because parents normally like to deny anything you ask, especially from a shacky tea-shop.

Since it is fried in oil, at home, my mom would make it only when there were like hundreds of people, so she wouldn’t have to ‘waste’ the oil. The end result being, you can get your hands on only one or two of these, while your ‘brutal’ cousins and other relatives are having unniyappam chaakara in their mouths.I made it with Sooji or Rava.(There is another version with Rice flour and coconut which I will post later sometime)

The first thing you need is a special skillet as you can see from Indira’s recipes. Don’t worry, you don’t have to go to India but you can buy the pan (Western version) here.

Recipe:Mix 1 cup of Sooji with 1 tsp of ghee.Add enough milk to make it a thick mixture. The mixtures should be of thick consistency, a little thicker than idli batter. Mix in 1/4 cup mashed small banana.Add 1/4 cup jaggery crumbs heated with ¼ cup water and strained - 1/4 cup
OR if adding sugar, add brown sugar -1/2 cup.Mix everything together (try to make the mixture fluffy with air bubbles) and let it sit for one hour.

We need to fry this in oil (Mostly at temples,they fry this in ghee). Use any vegetable oil. Pour oil into each impression. Fill oil upto 3/4th full in each impression. Heat the oil.

When it starts to smoke, pour the batter into each impression filled with oil. DO NOT COVER the skillet. After 5 or 6 minutes, flip the uniappam to the other side and cook. (I couldn’t take good pics, but follow the steps in the recipe, and make it the same way except we don’t cover and we pour oil filling half of each impression.)Serve with hot tea or coffee. The smell of jaggery in oil is heavenly. I used brown sugar i.e. why the light brown colour, if jaggery is used it will be dark brown in colour.