Paal Kozhukattai with Coconut Milk
What will you find in this post?
- Recipe for Paal Kozhukatai (South Indian Dessert)
- Round-up of Diwali sweets from my other blogger friends
Like every year, Diwali brings a lot of joy. Achi, my grandmother spends three days before diwali to make fresh homemade treats. There will vellam murruku, inippu somas, rava ladoo, kadamba mixture, mysore pak and oola pakoda. This image clearly depicts how my grandmother’s home will look liked during diwali time. The entire family will be present to celebrate the festival. In India its a national festival and if lucky we get a more than 3 days off from work and school.
This year is even more special as we will be celebrating it from our new home. We hung a canopy of string lights in our front yard yesterday. We will be adding more lights in the coming weeks. It truly feels festive. I always make homemade sweets and this year too, I had been planning on to make sweets. With a busy work schedule, I couldn’t make anything in the past weekend so all I have are the next few week nights to make some easy sweets.
My buddy Kankana sent an invite to join a virtual potluck for Diwali theme with other fellow bloggers from different parts of the world. #diwalipotluck (scroll down to get the recipes from my other blogger friends). I loved the idea. I want to share recipe for my childhood favorite dish – Paal Kozhukatai, a very popular Chettinad sweet made with jaggery, cardamom and coconut milk. The cute sphere dumplings used in the recipe is similar to the one used for making ammini kozhukatais. The key is to keep them soft.
It is one of the easiest dessert to make. The dumplings are steamed and dunked in a delicious cardamom-coconut stew.
Ingredients
For rice dumplings
- 1 cup rice flour
- 1.5 cups water
- 1 tsp oil
- 1 tsp salt
For Sweet Coconut Stew
- 3/4 cup powdered jaggery
- 1 cup coconut milk (from the can)
- 1 cup water
- 1 tsp ardamom powder
Instructions
For the rice dumplings:
- Heat a saucepan and roast the rice flour for 10-12 minutes on medium heat.
- Boil water with salt and oil. Once hot, pour it over the rice flour.
- Using a spatula, mix them well. Cover and let it rest for 30 minutes.
- Once cooled, roll into small balls.
- Steam it for 10-12 minutes.
- Set aside
For the Sweet Coconut Stew
- Heat water in a sauce pan, add jaggery and let it dissolve. Bring it to a boil.
- Add cardamom powder and coconut milk and switch off the flame.
- Add the cooked dumplings and let it soak all the goodness.
- Do not boil or cook the coconut milk
