It is a breakfast for us once a week.

My mother used to do it differently and I think its more village style or maybe even traditional.

Appom is so delicious even for children.  I have sweet memories of it, as my mom would make for us one by one while we keep eating them.

She didn’t use rice flour for this. The raw rice is soaked for a few hours and then ground to a soft batter with fresh coconut and fenugreek. The fenugreek is supposed to have digestive properties.

But today in the modern fast world, we really want to enjoy this appom with minimum work so I have come up with this recipe for anyone to do it easily.

 My young daughter craved for it in London where she was studying some years back.  During one of my visits there, I made do without the appom pan.  I went to the Asian store to buy rice flour and made it successfully with using the smallest wok that she had. One appom is never enough as once the lacy edge with pillow soft centre is drizzled with coconut milk and sprinkled generously with brown sugar; you are transported to literally heaven!

I was surprised because it was also a first try for me then with rice flour and yeast.

Since then I have done several variations of the appom recipe and hereby I am sharing one of the easiest and simplest recipe.

But of course if you do not want to go through the whole process, ready-made appom batter is found in Little India or other supermarkets.  (I usually get the SUVAI brand at Mustafa–its good).  Just add coconut milk and enough water, stir well and make appoms immediately.

Ingredients

½ cup cooked plain rice

1 cup rice flour

½ cup thick coconut milk

1 tsp yeast

1 tsp sugar

¼ cup lukewarm water

1 to 2 cups water

Salt to taste

Method

Into the warm water, add the sugar and yeast and stir quickly. Keep aside for 5 minutes.

In a blender, add cooked rice, coconut milk and blend till smooth.

Add the rice flour, yeast mixture, and 1 cup of water and continue to blend to a smooth runny batter. If the batter is too thick , you can add more water.  Add salt, mix and keep aside for 2 hours or even overnight to ferment.

Once you are ready to cook the appom, get ready your appom pan, You need to brush with a little oil or butter.

Heat it on the stove, ladle a spoon of batter and swirl the pan (pl see video). Cover and cook till the centre is cooked and the edges would have crisped up.

Remove and serve with more coconut milk and brown sugar. Best eaten hot.