Thengai Poornam Kozhukattai | Rice flour dumplings with jaggery-coconut stuffing

Ganesh Chathurthi is nearing and I realized that I haven't yet posted the famous kozhukkattais in my blog. So I am picking this "diabetic friendly sweets" as the opportunity to post this famous recipe. Since this is made of jaggery and steam cooked, this is lot more diabetic friendly when compared to modak which is fried in oil. Nevertheless all the festival foods are my favourites..

Kozhukatta or Kozhukkattai is a popular South Indian sweet dumpling made from rice flour, with a filling of grated coconut and jaggery, and is similar to Modak made in other parts of India. In South India especially in Tamil Nadu this is a must for the Vinayaka chathurthi pooja and neivedhyam. Other specialities generally include ulundu kozhukkatai, vadai, sundal, nei appam etc..

There are other varieties of kozhukkatais also, one that is made with channa dal as the filling, one that is made with green gram as the filling and so on... I haven't yet tried these. Since the kozhukattai with jaggery and coconut is the favourite of all I end up making the same every year.

Ingredients:

For the outer cover:

Rice flour (Ready made idiyappam flour) - 1/2 cup 

Oil - 1 tsp 

Water - As needed 

Salt - As needed

For the thengai poornam (coconut filling):

Coconut - 1 cup

Jaggery - 1 cup minus 3 tblsp

Cardamom powder - 1 tsp

Ghee - 1 tsp

Method:

• For the dough, bring water to boil with a tsp of oil and let it boil for a minute. Add it to the flour with salt and mix well. Use a spatula for mixing. You may need lots of water. So make sure you boil enough. The procedure is the same we do for making idiyappam dough.
• After it becomes warm, knead to a smooth dough and keep covered. You can make equal sized balls and keep covered.
• Place a Kadai on heat. Add the powdered jaggery and dissolve it using ¼ cup of water.
• Strain the jaggery syrup for impurities. Wash the kadai and pour the syrup back into the kadai.
• Heat it on medium flame for 5 to 6 minutes stirring once in a while. Let the syrup form a soft ball consistency. To check for consistency, add a drop of the syrup in a bowl of water and try to gather it and form a ball with you fingers.
• Once the soft ball consistency has reached, add the scraped coconut and stir continuously for 3 to 4 minutes or until all the moisture has almost evaporated and the whole thing starts coming together as a mass.
• Add the powdered cardamom and a teaspoon of ghee. Mix well and keep aside.
• Cool and make into small balls.
• Take one ball from the rice dough and flatten the dough in your palms and place a ball of jaggery coconut filling in the center. Gather the edges and seal the filling forming a peak at the top.
• Prepare more kozhukattais using the remaining dough and filling.
• Heat a steamer, you can also use the idli stand. Place the kozhukattais one by one without touching each other and steam for 10 minutes or until the outer layer is shiny.

Enjoy this sweet kozhukattais with Ganesha!!

Notes:

• To get the outer layer soft, its important to boil water well for making the dough. Dough should be almost cooked with the hot water so that you get non sticky pliable dough. If the dough is not cooked well, you may not be able to make the cups properly and will break while making. 
• Do not over cook , it may give you rubbery and broken kozhukattais.

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