Sabirah's Kitchen

a must have for get-togethers for people from the Island... you just can't have a sri lankan biryani without watalappan as desert!

Hakuru means "jaggery" in sinhalese and hence you will need plenty of jaggery, either in ground form, which looks like very dark sugar, or in shell form. The jaggery block will need to be ground in a spice grinder or mixer. Good jaggery is very dark brown to black in color and can be obtained from any good asian grocery store. 

If you don't happen to have any jaggery, you can try brown sugar, but the taste won't quite be the same as jaggery has this smokey undistinguishable flavour. Watalappan is usually eaten in rather small portions as it is very flavorsome, rich and sweet, I made this watalappan on the weekend and the amount was enough for 10 good eaters.

Ingredients:

1 cup thick coconut milk/cream

1 cup ground jaggery

4 eggs (I had size 7)

3 teaspoons of powdered cardamom, or more, according to your taste

0.5 teaspoon of powdered cinnamon

a pinch of nutmeg

pinch of salt

2 table spoons full of raisins

a few cashewnuts

whisk everything together until the jaggery has dissolved, and the liquid looks medium brown in color. Then transfer it into a container of your choice, I used a plastic bowl that takes 500 ml at least. Losely throw in the raisins, and cover with aluminium foil.

Now, there are several ways to cook the watalappan. You can either steam it, it takes about 1.5 hours.

Or you can microwave it (without the aluminium foil please) for about 25 mins, in 5 minute intervals. I tried that, the result is not quite the same but acceptable if you are short on time and are not a perfectionist.

You can bake it in the oven for about 1.5 to 2 hours time.

I pressure cooked it, I placed a steamer tray into the pressure cooker, a little water and my bowl on top of it. This takes about 40-45 mins pressure cooking time. 

The watalappan is perfect if it looks slightly spongy on cutting, if it is too dense it's rather like "kalu dodol". Immediately after cooking decorate with a few cashew nuts.

Let it cool down for a few hours. Enjoy!

these are delicious and sooo easy to make, but be careful, they are very sticky! they are also called seker pare in turkey.

They go very nicely with a cup of strong (cardamom) coffee or just a cup of tea!

I'm personally not very fond of cardamom though...

ingredients for a lot of seker pare:

500g standard flour

2 eggs

200g sugar

200g desiccated coconut

250g margarine or butter (i prefer margarine)

1 tsp baking powder

and some nuts of your choice, hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts.. I opted for almonds

to make the syrup:

1kg sugar (yes it has to be that much)

750 ml water

a cinnamon stick

a couple of crushed cardamom pods or alternatively 2-3 cloves

it pays to make the syrup in advance as either the cakes or the syrup should be cold in order to come out allright. You probably won't need as much syrup but you can save it for some other yummy things and keep it in the fridge. Mix the ingredients for the syrup in a saucepan and boil for about 10-20 minutes until it's... well, syrup! Then let it cool down...

to make the cakes, mix the dry ingredients to a smooth dough, take pieces of dough with a table spoon and make balls out of it. Place the balls on a greased and lined cake tin and lightly press them to a flatter shape. Pop a nut onto each cake.

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (celcius) or 300 Fahreheit and bake until light brown in color.

Once they are baked, dunk the cakes twice or thrice into the syrup until they are nicely soaked and covered and hide from kids and husband.