Appam with sweetened coconut milk - Rice pancake with sweetened coconut milk

 My children love to have pancakes with maple syrup. My first taste of maple syrup was in the 1990s after I came to Australia. What I had as a child with my rice pancakes was sweet coconut milk.  Freshly grated coconut, blended with water and the milk squeezed out of the coconut, sweetened with sugar or jaggery is the "syrup" I grew up with.

Today's recipe is a rice appam - that I made the cheat's way to test out the pancake mixes available in the Indian store. I was pleasantly surprised to get a good result.  The wait time is about 2 hours - and there is practically no clean up afterwards.

Normally, when I make it the traditional way, I have to soak the rice, grind it along with the other ingredients and then clean up my grinder - which is a lot of work. Fermenting time is the same which ever way you do it.  Recipe for traditional appam is here: http://kitchenanugraha.blogspot.com/2018/12/appam-and-stew.html 

Ingredients:

For the pancake:

1 packet Pre mixed appam flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

lukewarm water

a little oil or ghee to grease the base of your appam wok, after each one is cooked

For the sweetened coconut milk:

1 tin coconut milk

Hot water

Sugar to taste

Method:

I followed the instructions on the back of the packet because I was testing it out.

Here is the brand of appam mix that I bought:

In a large dish, add 1 cup of the appam flour and mix in 1 and a half cups of lukewarm water.  Make sure the water is at body temperature and not hot.

Whisk well and leave it for a couple of hours in a warm place.  I warmed up the oven to 50 degrees C, turned it off and then placed the dish inside the oven.

When you come back in a  couple of hours you will see the mix has turned frothy.

This is a good sign.

Heat your wok, rub a few drops of oil to grease the bottom, pour a couple of spoons of batter into the wok.

Swill it around so you get a mound in the centre and a lace on the sides,

Close the lid and let it cook for a couple of minutes.

Serve hot with sweet coconut milk.

To make sweet coconut milk:

To 1 cup of thick coconut milk, add 1 cup hot water and sugar to taste. Stir well to dissolve all of the sugar.

The centre of the appam should be a little mound, thick and spongy to absorb all the the coconut milk - and I am glad to say that this appam mix certainly passed that test.