Category Archives: Dessert

Jaggery Chip Coconut Cookies

I am happy to announce the launch of my travel article apps on GPSmyCity and an app giveaway of one of my articles, valid this week only until August 7th. Please download the GPSmyCity master app first to access the free upgrade for my article and check out what additional features GPSmyCity offers to what is already out there.

To celebrate this launch, I am sharing a delightful cookie recipe of my mother – her delicious jaggery chip coconut cookies. So, do try out this cookie while you check out GPSmyCity and the free travel article app.

cookie 18.JPG

Bringing these cookies over to Fiesta Friday #131, co-hosted by Su and Laura.

Jaggery Chip Coconut Cookies

  • Servings: 6
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

  • Jaggery chips – ¼ cup
  • Coconut – ¼ cup, freshly scraped and toasted
  • Flour – ½ cup
  • Butter – ¼ cup
  • Vanilla essence

Method

  1. Mix the flour and butter.
  2. Add the jaggery chips, toasted coconut and vanilla.
  3. Chill the dough for 15 to 30 mins.
  4. Slice dough and bake at 180C for around 15 – 20 mins.
  5. Serve with a cup of Sri Lankan tea.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

 

A Guest Post for Eid: Wattalapam or Steamed coconut pudding

Thank you, Indu, for inviting me to guest post during your Sri Lankan culinary journey. I am sorry that I had not been able to share a recipe then but I figured better late than never, when I sent you this post for Eid. Thank you so much for posting it and sharing it on your blog!

Indu's International Kitchen

Wattalapam(Coconut Custard Pudding)Happy Eid to all those who celebrate! Today marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting.  I sincerely hope that the new year will usher in peace and happiness for everyone and reduce the suffering that we have been recently witnessing across the globe. Life is simple and let’s keep it simple. Live and let live.

Anyways, today’s post is a guest post from a co-blogger and a good friend Ahila.  Ahila blogs at ‘ A taste of SriLankan cuisine‘ where she blogs authentic Sri Lankan recipes of her mom. When I had done my virtual tour of Sri Lanka earlier this year, I had asked Ahila if she could do a guest post. But she had been very busy with work and other engagements and so she was unable to do one at that time. But now she reached out to me when she finally had…

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Wattalapam Jelly Pudding

As I mentioned in my post on Wattalapam cake last week, my mother has been making a series of Iftar treats, several of which are her twists on the traditional Wattalapam pudding. Continuing with the theme of Iftar, today’s recipe is another twist on Wattalapam – my mother’s wattalapam jelly pudding.

Wattalapam Jelly 1.jpeg

I tried to make it once last year, following my mother’s recipe I had shared on this blog a few years back. It went quite well till I removed the cooked, fragrant pudding mix from the stove. I made the mistake of mixing the agar agar into the pudding mix, while it was still quite hot, due to which the pudding never thickened further even after being in the refrigerator for a whole day.

When I mentioned this to my mother recently, she immediately made this the following day making sure I saw the entire process especially when to mix the agar agar into the pudding mix.

Hope you enjoy this delicious pudding recipe! I am taking this dessert over to Angie’s Fiesta Friday #126 and for the first time to Cindy’s Gluten free Fridays #201.

Wattalapam Jelly Pudding

  • Servings: 2 or 3
  • Difficulty: average
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Ingredients:

  • Coconut milk – 1 cup, thick
  • Egg – 1
  • Jaggery – ½ to 1 cup, depending on taste
  • Cardamom – 3 or 4, crushed
  • Vanilla extract – 2 tsp
  • Flavour-less jelly mix or Agar agar – 1 ½ tsp
  • Hot water – 3-4 tbsp

Method

  1. Mix the coconut milk and jaggery.
  2. Lightly whisk the egg before adding the jaggery-milk mixture. Blend the mixture well.
  3. Add the crushed cardamom and vanilla extract to the mixture.
  4. Cook the pudding mixture on low heat, stirring continuously, for about 10 mins.
  5. Remove the thickened mixture from the heat and keep aside to cool to at least 50% what it’s heat was when removed from the stove. This is an important step.
  6. Mix the jelly or agar agar powder with the hot water and let it cool slightly.
  7. Beat the jelly mix into the cooled pudding mixture.
  8. Cool and refrigerate.

Wattalapam Jelly 5.jpeg

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Chocolate Biscuit Pudding

This month, I’d like to share my mother’s recipe for chocolate biscuit pudding. A very popular dessert in Sri Lanka, chocolate biscuit pudding is an easy-to-make, delicious dessert that can handle different variations to its layers.

As I enjoy my slice of the pudding today, I wish you all a merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Biscuit pudding

Chocolate Biscuit Pudding

  • Servings: 5-6
  • Difficulty: easy
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Ingredients:

  • Gold Marie biscuits (or other appropriate biscuit of your choice) – 3 packets (180 g)
  • Milk flavoured with cocoa powder or melted chocolate – 1 cup
  • Plain milk – ¼ cup
  • Margarine – 100g
  • Icing sugar – 250g
  • Vanilla
  • Cashew nuts – 100g

Method

  1. Mix icing sugar and butter. Add the chocolate milk slowly until the mix becomes creamy.
  2. Soak the biscuits in plain milk and line the pyrex dish or dessert pan with a thickness of two biscuits.
  3. Spread the cream over the base layer and sprinkle some of the chopped nuts. Add another layer of biscuits soaked in the plain milk and repeat the process of adding the cream and nuts. The biscuit pudding can have as many layers as you want but 2-3 layers are good.
  4. Spread the remaining cream on top of the dessert. Decorate with strawberries.
  5. Refrigerate for a minimum 30 minutes before serving.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Breuder

During Christmas season, the popular cake/ bread that is ordered from bakeries in Sri Lanka is the breuder. This is a speciality of the Burgher cuisine of Sri Lanka. I had been trying for some time to find someone to contribute a home-made recipe of this delicious bread. I was delighted to finally come across another blogger and invited him to share his family recipe on this blog as well. Here is the guest post of Paul van Reyk, from My Buth Kuddeh food site, with his introduction to his family tradition of baking breuder and his recipe. Wishing you all a merry Christmas!

No Christmas at our house in Sri Lanka was complete without my grandmother’s breuder. It’s basically a cakey bread, based on a yeasted dough but with the sweetness of a sponge cake, related to Italian pannetone. It’s a direct entry into Sri Lanka cuisine via the Dutch Broodtulband named for the fluted ‘turban’ shaped mould used to make it. Further embedding the Dutch connection, brueder is traditionally eaten in Sri Lankan Burgher households in slices covered in butter and topped with a thick slice of Edam cheese. There is something very festive about that red waxy ball which sliced open reveals a pale European sun yellow cheese. Making the breuder, I am transported back to the kitchen of my childhood, watching my grandmother knead the dough, having the thrill of buttering the mould and pressing sultanas against the sides anxious that they stay in place, full of expectation as it was taken to my uncles house across the road as we didn’t have an oven, and then the excitement of un-moulding this magical transformation of so few ingredients hoping desperately that it comes away cleanly. The smile on grannie’s face when it does was more rewarding almost than the first bite into its soft, crumby heart.

breuder

Breuder

  • Difficulty: difficult
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Ingredients:

  • 500gms plain flour
  • 50 gms butter
  • baker’s yeast
  • 1 tsp sugar
  • water
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 250 gms caster sugar
  • 125 gms currants or sultanas or raisins or a mixture of them

Method:

  1. Make the dough the night before. Take as much yeast as is recommended for your particular yeast for making bread with 500 gms of flour (it can vary so read the packet or ask when you buy it), add the yeast and the sugar to a little hot water to get the yeast started. It will froth slightly. When it’s bubbling happily, add this to the flour and mix in well. Now slowly add water and keep mixing until you have a lump of dough that lifts easily out of the bowl or off the board. Knead it for 10 minutes or so. Put it in a bowl, cover the bowl with a damp tea-towel and leave it in a warm place to rise overnight.
  1. The next day, take the dough and add to it the butter, egg yolks and sugar. Add the first three yolks separately and mix in well each time. Then add the others also one at a time alternating with dollops of the caster sugar till it is all used up. What you will have now is a very thick wet doughy batter.
  1. Butter a turban mould. Put a good sprinkle of whatever dried fruit you are using on the bottom. Squish some dried fruit against the sides of the mould, too. Pour in the batter. Sprinkle more of the dried fruit on top of the batter. If you like, and I do, you can mix some dried fruits into the batter, too.
  1. Leave this in a warm place, the mould covered with a damp cloth, for 1 or 2 hours until it rises again (it won’t rise as much as the dough did overnight).
  1. Meanwhile, pre-heat your oven to very hot – around 220C.
  1. When the dough has risen the second time, put the mould in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Check at that stage that the breuder is cooked by poking a bamboo skewer or similar into the dough. If it comes out clean, your breuder is ready. If it doesn’t, give the breuder 10 – 15 minutes more.

Tip: Putting some baking/greaseproof/brown paper on the top will reduce the likelihood of the dried fruit burning.

  1. When it’s cooked, take it out of the oven and leave it to cool in the mould. You should then be able to give the mould a good thump and have the brooder come cleanly out of it.

Resist all temptation to ice or otherwise muck around with the breuder! Just slice it up and have some butter and Edam or cheddar cheese to have it with. But you are allowed to make summer pudding with the left over breuder if you like, or indeed any of those bread pudding dishes.

Recipe source: Paul van Reyk

Surprise Delight

This week’s recipe is from Trevor Martil, who shares another of his mother’s favourite recipes – a dessert she named ‘surprise delight.’ I am bringing this recipe together with some lovely songs, from a country I visited three years ago, to Fiesta Friday.

While there were several highlights of my trip, the most inspiring was the visit to Robben Island. And yes, I was also introduced to some south African music while there. Today’s music features some of the South African music that I enjoyed starting with Mama Afrika – Miriam Makeba.

The other clip for today is from the Soweto Gospel Choir.

Hope you enjoyed the music and do send me your feedback if you try out the recipe given below! 🙂

Surprise Delight

  • Servings: 8
  • Difficulty: average
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Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons low sugar mixed fruit jam
  • 1 1/2 cups mixed fruit cordial
  • 1 can cocktail fruits
  • 1 tablespoon condensed milk
  • 2 cups cake crumbs
  • 60g cashew nuts
  • 60g sugar
  • 3 dessertspoons corn flour
  • 1 1/2 cups water
  • 2 egg whites
  • 2 teaspoons gelatin or agar-agar
  • 1 packet strawberry jelly (jelly, 2 cups water, 15g china moss)

Method:

  1. Mix cake crumbs with mixed fruit jam, cashew nuts and press into shallow dish. Leave to set.
  2. Add cordial, water, corn flour, gelatin to a pan and cook till it thickens.
  3. Take off heat, add condensed milk and stiffly beat in egg whites.
  4. Mash mixed fruits, spread over cake crumbs.
  5. Pour the cordial custard over it.
  6. Make the jelly.
  7. Once set, chop the jelly and spread it over the custard.
  8. Sprinkle nuts.
  9. Chill and serve.

Recipe source: Trevor Martil.

Peanut Chocolate Cake

Today, I wish to re-post a delicious chocolate cake recipe of my mother that I had posted last year.

Today’s music features Arabic pop. The first clip is a song, by Samira Said and Cheb Mami, that has special meaning to me. Sometimes when I am stuck in my writing process, I turn to music to clear my head and focus. The type of music that helps me at one time does not necessarily help at another time so I usually experiment with a few before I come across the right one for the particular writing. One of the times I faced a writing block was during the writing of my master’s thesis. After several non-productive days and many music listening hours later, I found myself listening to an online Arabic pop radio stream. From the moment, this song came on, I felt very much energized and focused and soon started working on my writing. This was the song that pulled me through the subsequent weeks of thesis writing and as such, I retain a fondness for it.

The next clip is a recent release of Diana Haddad, another Arabic pop singer that I used to listen to.

Have a wonderful day and enjoy this cake!
Peanut chocolate cake

Peanut Chocolate Cake

  • Servings: 8-10
  • Difficulty: average
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Peanut Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:

  • Vegetable oil margarine – ¾ cup + 1 tbsp (for frosting)
  • Sugar – 1 cup
  • Banana – ½ , as an egg substitute
  • Wheat flour – 1 ½ cup
  • Soya milk – 1 cup
  • Peanut – ½ cup, coarsely ground + 2 tbsp (for frosting)
  • Vanilla – 2 tsp
  • Cocoa powder – 2 tbsp + 1 tsp (for frosting)
  • Baking powder – 1 tsp
  • Baking soda – ½ tsp
  • Icing sugar – 2 tbsp, for frosting

Method:

  1. Sift the dry ingredients – the wheat flour together with the cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda – and keep aside.
  2. Mash the banana in a bowl. Add the margarine and sugar to the bowl and whisk them together.
  3. Gradually add the soya milk and continue whisking.
  4. Stir in the coarsely ground peanuts and vanilla essence.
  5. Slowly fold in the dry ingredients.
  6. Pour the cake batter into a greased tray and bake at 190⁰C/374⁰F for 40 mins.
  7. Whisk 1 tbsp margarine together with 1 tsp cocoa powder, 2 tbsp icing sugar and 2 tsp ground nuts to make the frosting.
  8. Spread evenly on surface of the peanut chocolate cake, after the cake has sufficiently cooled.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Wattalapam Jelly Pudding

I am sharing a pudding recipe that I first shared during last Eid. Wattalapam is originally a part of the Sri Lankan Malay cuisine but has become the most popular Sri Lankan dessert.  This recipe of my mother is an adaptation of the traditional wattalapam into a jelly pudding. I would like to share it at Eid Eats 2014, which I learnt about from Jhuls, an Eid event hosted by Sarah and Asiyah.
Wattalapam jelly puddingI also wanted to share two music clips from MTV Coke Studio’s youTube channel. The first clip is of a Sufi music duo that I enjoy listening to – the Wadali brothers, Puranchand and Pyarelal Wadali, from Amritsar.

The second clip is a song I listened to for the first time last week when I was searching for youTube clips of the Wadali brothers. Composed by Salim and Sulaiman Merchant, the song is sung by Munawar Masoom and Kailash Kher.

Eid Mubarak to everyone celebrating this day!
final eid eats

Wattalapam Jelly Pudding

  • Servings: 4
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

Ingredients:

  • Thick coconut milk – 1 cup (this can be obtained by blending ¼ cup freshly scraped coconut with 1 cup of water)
  • Egg – 1 (can use 2 tbsp corn starch as a substitute)
  • Jaggery – ½ to 1 cup, depending on taste
  • Cardamom – 3 or 4, crushed
  • Vanilla extract – 2 tsp
  • Agar agar – 2 tbsp
  • Hot water – 6 tbsp

Method:

  1. Mix the coconut milk and jaggery.
  2. Lightly whisk the egg before adding the jaggery-milk mixture. Blend the mixture well.
  3. Add the crushed cardamom and vanilla extract to the mixture.
  4. Cook the pudding mixture on low heat, stirring continuously, for about 10 mins.
  5. Remove the thickened mixture from the heat and keep aside to cool.
  6. Take 2 tsp agar agar powder and mix with 6 tbsp hot water.
  7. Beat the agar agar mix into the slightly cooled pudding mixture.
  8. Cool and refrigerate.

Recipe Source: Raji Thillainathan.

Rasavalli Kilangu Kool

Today is a very special day at my home. It is my mother’s birthday.

After quite some time away from the kitchen, I decided to bake something today and as my mother is a snacker, made a vegan date and walnut loaf and some granola bars.

The recipe I am sharing today is a special treat from Jaffna that my mother made earlier this week. This dish is a special breakfast or dessert dish from north Sri Lanka and made from rasavalli kilangu or purple yam (dioscorea alata).

purple yam

purple yam

 Rasavalli Kilangu Kool/ Purple Yam Porridge

Time taken: 20 mins

Serves 3

rasavalli kilanguIngredients:

  • Rasavalli kilanku/ purple yam – 1 small
  • Thin coconut milk – 1 cup
  • Sugar – 2 or 3 tbsp
  • Salt, a pinch

Method:

  1. Clean and peel the yam and then chop it up roughly.
  2. Cook the yam with 3 cups of water. Once the water dries up, lightly mash the boiled yam.
  3. Add 1 cup of thin coconut milk.
  4. Add 2-3 tbsp of sugar and a pinch of salt to the porridge.
  5. Let the porridge simmer till the liquid  thickens.
  6. Serve warm.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.

Vegan Christmas Cake

Last week, my mother decided to bake her special vegan christmas cake. While I was initially planning to share this recipe on the 25th, I am sharing it ahead at my mother’s request. It is a delightful cake and I am sure you will enjoy it, if you do try it.

Christmas cake veganVegan Christmas Cake

Vegan christmas cake slicesTime taken: 3 hours

Makes 20 slices

Christmas cakeIngredients:

  • Dates – 1 cup, chopped
  • Raisins – ½ cup
  • Cashewnuts – ¼ cup
  • Almonds – ¼ cup, chopped
  • Caramelized peanuts – ½ cup
  • Cherry – ¼ cup, chopped
  • Chow chow (choko) – ½ cup, chopped
  • Ginger preserve – 1 tbsp
  • Puhul dosi (pumpkin preserve) – ¼ cup, chopped
  • Lemon rind – 1 tsp
  • Orange peel preserve – 1 tbsp
  • Mixed peel – ½ cup
  • Coconut treacle – 4 tbsp
  • Caramel syrup – ¼ cup
  • Almond oil – 3 tbsp
  • Vegetable oil – ¼ cup
  • Mixed spice (Cardamom, Cinnamon, Cloves) – 2 tsp
  • Thick tea – 1 tbsp
  • Semolina – ½ cup
  • Flour – ½ cup
  • Baking powder – 1 tsp
  • Baking soda – 2/3 tsp
  • Rose essence – ¼ tsp

Method:

  1. Chop all the ingredients mentioned above (dates, raisins, cashewnuts, peanuts, almonds, chow chow, lemon rind, orange peel preserve, mixed peel, ginger preserve, cherries and puhul dosi/ pumpkin preserve) and mix together in a bowl.
  2. To the bowl, add the liquids stirring them in as you do so. Add the honey, caramel syrup and thick tea and let it soak for about ½ hour.
  3. Mix well before adding the vegetable oil and almond oil. Add the rose essence and cinnamon, cardamom and clove mixed spice to the bowl.
  4. Gradually stir in the semolina.
  5. Sift the flour with the baking powder and soda and add the flour mix to the bowl.
  6. Whisk the contents of the bowl together so that there are no flour lumps anywhere.
  7. Transfer the cake batter to the baking tray and bake at 120⁰C/248⁰F for 1 to 1 ½ hour till the cake is browned at the top and the cake is baked through.
  8. After the cake cools, cut the cake into pieces and wrap the pieces into Christmas wrappings.

Recipe source: Raji Thillainathan.