Elayappam/Ela Ada

Elayappam is a popular snack in my family. For me elayappam comes with many fond memories. My grandma, mom and her sisters used to gather in grandma's kitchen, sit together and do the process of spreading appam to ela. We liittle ones hardly join them for watching and yeah we were busy in playing right. Ohhhh i miss those days and my dear ones. Ok enough of my nostalgic momemts right? :) .

Coming back, we were in an indian store and my hubby noticed frozen ela ada/elayappam there. He wants to buy it. I always try to avoid frozen foods and so promised to do it at home with our traditional recipe. So this is for my dear hubby. The taste was yummy and got thumbs up from him and our friends. Double happy :) .Here comes the recipe for you all. Happy cooking .

Preparation Time:30 minutes
Cooking Time:20 minutes
Serves:3

Ingredients:

Raw rice	1 cup
Jaggery	2&1/2 cup
Grated Coconut	1&1/4 cup
Water	1/4 cup(appx)
Banana leaf	as needed

Preparation:

(1) Soak raw rice in water for about 15 minutes. Drain the excess water and spread rice over a newspaper so that excess water will be drained off. Grind raw rice in a mixer and make a very fine powder. Sieve it to make sure it is finely powdered. Mean while mash jaggery too into fine powder

(2) Now take 3/4 cup of jaggery in a bowl and add 2 tspoon of water to it. Mix well using hand to ensure jaggery is finely powdered. To this add rice powder and mix well using hand.

(3) Combine jaggery and rice powder. Now you have to make it a thick dough. Sprinkle water little by little and mix well using hand ( Don't add more water. The dough should not be loose or too tight.). Make a medium thick dough.

(4) Now heat the banana leaves over the flame of stove and keep it aside. Take one leaf and add around two tspoon of dough to the centre of leaf (adjust the quantity depending on the size of leaf) Spread it using the fingers and make a circular shape (refer the picture). Spread the dough so lightly so that the leaf should be transparent.

(5) Above that sprinkle around 2 tspoon of coconut and jaggery one above the other as shown in the picture (you can increase or decrease the amount of jaggery/coconut as per your taste).

(6) Fold over the leaf. Now seal the edges. For that first fold the two edges and finally cover it with the third fold. Repeat it with other leaves. I made 8 such packs.

(7) Steam it using a steamer. I used idly cooker to cook. It will be ready in some 20 to 30 minutes.  (When you open the leaf one part of dough will be stitched to other half. This is the correct stage. If you add more water while mixing it will be seen as squishy)

Your elayappam/ela ada is now ready.

Tips and variations:

• You can also add boiled green gram/payaru with this. Sprinkle 2 tspoon each as the third layer over the coconut.
• Be careful while adding water. Adding more water will make appam squishy.