Kalthappam / Sweet Rice Cake

Kalthappams are very common delicacy in Malabar regions of Kerala. My mom is an expert in this, she makes kalthappam with all kind of left over batters like coconut dosa batter, vellappam(Rice pancake) batter etc and all of them comes out perfect. For me, Kalthapam is a tricky one to get its exact texture. I had tried out many times and this is the recipe am satisfied with a perfect outcome. The perfect Kalthappam should have whole loots of lines in the inner parts as you can see in the pictures. Colloquially we say "aaru" for those lines.

The below picture is the one my mom made recently with much more darker jaggery.

Kalthappam / Sweet Rice Cake

Preparation Time : 30 minutes

Cooking time : 15 minutes

Ingredients:-
White Rice - 2 cups
Cooked Rice - 2 Handful
Shredded coconut - 1/2 cup
Fennel seeds - 1/2 tsp
Cardamom -  4
Black Cumin - 1/2 tsp
Jaggery - 250 gm (3 pieces)
Baking Soda - a pinch
Salt
For Tampering
Coconut Bites (Small pieces of coconut)- 2 tbsp
Shallots- 3 or 4
Coconut Oil - 1 to 2 tbsp

Method:-
1. Wash and soak the rice for couple of hours. (5-6 hours)
2. Drain the rice. Grind together rice, cooked rice, coconut, cardamom, fennel, salt in 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water. (Don't add more water) It should be a little thick batter like the idli batter
3. Add baking soda to the batter and mix well with a spatula.
4. In a pan melt jaggery in 1/4 cup of water and pour this hot melted liquid to the batter and stir well.
5. Add black cumin and mix well. You should get a medium thin batter now.
6. You can adjust the sweetness of the batter by adding little sugar if required.
7. Keep the batter aside for half an hour to one hour.
8. Now in a pressure cooker, add coconut oil and tamper coconut bites and shallots in medium flame. Keep them aside.
9. Swirl the pressure cooker well, so the remaining coconut oil is spread on all sides.
10.Pour the batter and then set the flame to low. Close the lid without whistle/weight on it.
8. Once half cooked, throw the tampering over it. Close the lid and let it cook completely till an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Notes:-
1. Make sure the pressure cooker is hot enough while pouring the batter to it. Only reduce the flame after pouring the batter.
2. Make sure to put only a very little pinch of baking soda, otherwise the kalthappam won't come perfect.
3. If your pressure cooker capacity is less, you can use this quantity to make two cakes.
4. Non-stick pans also can be substituted with pressure cooker.