Appams and Velam Appam - Lacy pancakes with jaggery

 Appams make festival special breakfasts and dinners. They make a good combination with easy stews and curries.I make them often because its easy to store in the refrigerator for daily morning breakfasts too.

These appams just have jaggery sprinkled over it but you have to take my word that it takes the plain ones to totally different level with just that speck of sweet sprinkled over it.The ones you see below are plain appams.

To make the basic appam batter you need


Raw rice/pacha arisi 3 cups
Idli rice/boiled rice 1 cup
Cooked rice one hand full or half a cup
Urad dal/ulundhu half cup
Grated coconut half cup
Coconut water (optional) of one coconut
Appa soda/baking soda a generous pinch
Salt 1 tsp or more


- Soak all of the above rices and dals together for 2 hours, now grind into a smooth batter in a blender adding the remaining ingredients.Add salt and a pinch of baking soda and stir well.
- Allow this batter to ferment for 8-10 hours.

To make the plain appams:

• Once the batter is fermented, check the consistency of the batter it has to be a little more runny than dosa batter.If its too runny it may stick to your kadhai/vessel.
• Heat the kadhai use a nonstick one if you want to reduce the hassles of sticking appams.Cover with a lid.
• Pour 1 large ladle of the batter to the centre of the kadhai and swirl the kadhai so it coats the sides of the vessel cover and cook until the centre is done for 2-3 mins on a medium flame.
• Repeat for all the batter as required.

To make the vellam appams :

• Same procedure as above just sprinkle scraped jaggery/ vellam to the centre of the appam cover and cook same way as plain ones.

Serve hot appams with chicken Chettinad curry, chicken stew or vegetable kurma or egg kurma or just plain milk or coconut milk.
Vellam appams are good to go as they are.

Some tips to get the appams right :

- If your vessel is nonstick then the appam will leave the sides once its cooked and the sides are crispy if not then pour some oil in the vessel you're about to use to make the appams over night.In the morning drain the oil, wipe the vessel with a kitchen towel rub a cut onion and then pour the appams.Hopefully it won't stick then and will be smooth making them.

- Instead of jaggery you can use palm jaggery or karupukatti too tastes good too.


Sending this to Lets Cook for Christmas @ Just not the cakes, Favorite Recipes:Christmas, Christmas Recipes