Kokos / Rose Cookies / Achappam

I wanted to launch this blog over the Christmas period and what better start to the blog than my favourite Christmas snack Kokos!

 

Kokos is a deep fried rosette made with a batter of rice flour, sugar and eggs with a smattering of sesame and cumin seeds.

Growing up, I remember going to my grandmother’s home in Nagercoil for Christmas holidays and watching my grandmother and two of her helpers, Rosamma and Grace dipping the mould into this batter and deep frying these cookies in an impossibly large wok.  My cousins and I would pick them up and snap them into little rings for our fingers while eating them at the same time.  My mother got me a mould a while back telling me I needed to season it before using it. 

The kokos is a very easy snack to make if you master the mould.  The artisan made iron mould needs to be seasoned and familiarized to hot oil. This helps the batter to slip off the mould when you start to fry.  It took me a couple of years to season my mould – only because I got too frustrated too easily.  The mould needs to be dipped in hot oil and you have to be prepared to lose a few kokos before the beauties slip off like little roses.  These days it is possible to get non stick moulds – but I have not used them or seen them being used so I cannot tell you how good they are.

I had to hunt around for the recipe on the internet since I remember my grandmother making batter out of soaked and ground rice.  Most recipes on the internet have plain flour as the main ingredient.  You can make them with plain flour, but I have friends who are gluten intolerant so I kept looking till I found a great recipe with just rice flour.  A big thank you to www.cheenachatti.com for the recipe.

Living in Melbourne it is not always easy or convenient to get fresh coconuts to make coconut milk.  So I have improvised where needed.

The kokos mould:

Ingredients:

Unroasted rice flour -  500 grams

Caster sugar -  1 cup

A pinch of salt

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

1 tin or 400 ml regular coconut milk

From the 600 gm carton, eggs – 2 nos (approx. 50 gms each egg)

Black sesame seeds – 2 teaspoons (optional)

Cumin seeds – 1 teaspoon (optional)

Vegetable Oil – for deep frying

Method:

1.       Sieve the unroasted rice flour and remove lumps.

2.       Add caster sugar and a pinch of salt to the rice flour and mix well.

3.       Add coconut milk and vanilla essence to the flour and whisk it in to get a fairly thick batter – slightly thicker than pancake batter.

4.       Beat and add the eggs one at a time to the batter.

5.       If the batter is too thick add a couple of tablespoons of water.

6.       Add the sesame seeds and cumin seeds to the mix. Let the batter rest for 30 minutes.

7.       Heat oil in a deep bottomed pan / wok.

8.       Immerse the cookie mould in the hot oil.

9.       When it becomes hot, remove the mould from the oil, shake of the excess oil and dip 3/4th of it in the batter.

10.   Dip the batter coated mould in the hot oil, wait for 20-25 seconds and shake it lightly.

11.   When the batter gets cooked it will slip off the mould and fall into the oil.

12.   Flip it so that the cookie gets cooked and golden brown and crispy.

13.   Drain well on paper towels.

14.   Repeat steps 8-13 with the remaining batter.  This includes immersing the mould in hot oil after each cookie is shaken off.

15.   Store in an airtight container after they have cooled down completely.

Yield:

This recipe yields about 50 to 60 kokos that are 7.5 cms in diameter.