Vatteyappam literally means round cake or round bread. It is a soft and fluffy steamed rice cake often made for Tea. The main ingredients for vatteyappam are same as that of appams i.e. rice and coconut. You can make vatteyappams with rice flour and coconut milk, but I often use leftover palappam batter for making vatteyappams. You just need to add a few more ingredients to the batter and it is ready for steaming. My mother sometimes used jaggery while making vatteyappam but I use sugar. The taste, colour and texture differs if you use jaggery instead of sugar. I love the version with sugar since I feel it’s fluffier than the other one.
Ingredients
- 2-2.5 cups Appam Batter (Check my Kerala Style Appam recipe on how to prepare the batter)
- ½ cup Grated Coconut
- 4 tbsp. Sugar
- 2-3 pods Cardamom, powdered
- 15 Raisins
- 10 Cashew nuts, broken
- Salt, to taste
- Ghee, for greasing
- Water, a few teaspoons
Method
- Grind the grated coconut along with a few teaspoons of water to form a smooth mixture. Add it to the appam batter.
- Add sugar as per desired sweetness, powdered cardamom and salt to taste. Mix everything together. The batter should be somewhat thick and not watery. Keep this batter aside for 20-30 minutes so that it becomes foamy.
- Grease a round steamer plate with ghee and pour the batter into it. Steam it for 10 minutes. Open the lid and place the raisins and cashews on top. (Be careful not to burn your hands!)
- Keep it covered and allow it to cook for 10 more minutes or until done. Insert a toothpick/fork to check if it comes out clean.
- Once the vatteyappam is cooked, allow it to cool thoroughly and then transfer it to a plate. Cut it into desired shapes and serve.