Chocolate Spice Appam/Adai

Hi everyone!

Here is my first recipe for #Choctoberfest! I decided that I was going to give an original South Indian sweet recipe a twist. I took on the challenge to veganize and add chocolate to it!

Appam/Adai is a South Indian sweet that is made at home during various festivals. Appam and Adai in this recipe are made from the same batter. While appam is deep fried in oil, adai can be steamed or made on the pan with minimal use of oil.

My recipe included spices such as cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger and cocoa powder! It did not overpower the original taste of the Appam/Adai but definitely added a tasty unique flavour with the addition of all these warm spices!

Ingredients:

6 very ripe bananas

1/4 cup multigrain flour

1/2 cup rice flour

3 tsp Hershey’s cocoa powder

2-3 tbsp raw cashews

2-3 tbsp chocolate chips

1/4 cup brown sugar

3-4 pods of cardamom

3-4 cloves

1 tsp ginger powder

1 tsp sugar

small stick or 1 tsp powder cinnamon

grated coconut for garnish

Steps:

1. Blend bananas, multigrain flour, rice flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder. This will make a thick paste.

2.Separately grind the ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves and sugar into powder.

3. Add cashews to the ground spices and pulse so that there are cashew chunks seen.

4. Add the spices and cashews into the thick batter. Stir.

5. Heat the appam griddle with oil (I used canola oil). When the oil is hot, pour spoons of batter into the hot oil. Wait a few minutes, use a spoon to flip the balls of batter so that it fries completely. If at this point you notice that your batter is still watery, then wait a little longer before flipping the batter over OR add a little bit more rice flour to your next batch of appams.

6. Once the appams are done frying (dark brown and crispy on the outside), place them on paper towels to absorb some of the oil. Serve warm with coconut garnish and cashew!

7. Now, if you do not want to fry this in oil, instead use the same batter to pour into an adai griddle with minimal/no oil and cook it instead! I topped these with some chocolate chips for some added chocolate sweetness!