Unniyappam

Unniyappam (Unniyappam／ഉണ്ണിയപ്പം) is a Kerala sweet made by combining a rice batter with jaggery and bananas and shallow-frying it in a pan with round wells. The small, round, brown exterior has a toasty flavor, the inside is soft, and here and there pieces of coconut add some bite. In Malayalam, unni means “small,” and appam refers to foods made from rice batter and similar ingredients.

The Pan’s Wells Create the Round Shape

The batter is held in a dedicated pan called an unniyappakara. Its surface has several round wells; oil is heated in each one, and batter is poured in. Once one side is cooked, each piece is turned over so that both sides become brown. The wells hold the runny batter and keep each piece round.

In one Kerala recipe (a set of ingredient proportions and method), rice is soaked in water and then finely ground with bananas, jaggery syrup, and cardamom. Pieces of coconut, fried in ghee to bring out their aroma, are added to the batter, which has been made soft enough to pour into the pan.

If the batter is poured in with room to spare rather than filling the wells, the pieces can be moved and turned over partway through cooking. The surface browns where it touches the fat, while the inside keeps the softness of the rice-and-fruit batter. After the pieces are lifted out of the pan, the excess oil is drained on a rack or similar.

Unniyappam on a plate, fried into small round shapes. Photo: കാക്കര, 2012-04-13, location unknown. Original image／CC BY-SA 3.0. Downscaled version from the source; no additional processing.

The Same Rice Batter, Prepared in Different Ways

Some methods soak and grind the rice, and others make the batter from rice flour. When flour is used, its fineness and how the water is added also affect the result. Some household recipes add some wheat flour or let the batter rest. Some methods fry the freshly ground batter as it is, so fermentation is not essential for this sweet.

The jaggery used for sweetness is sugar made by boiling down juice. Unlike dissolved white sugar, it adds its own color and aroma to the batter. Ripe bananas are ground into the batter, while the coconut is left in small pieces. Although both are fruits, they are used differently: the banana blends throughout the batter, and the coconut remains as pieces you can notice when you bite.

There are also versions that use jackfruit instead of bananas. A recipe collection from the Goa research facility of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research includes a small appam in which a paste of jackfruit cooked with jaggery and ghee is combined with rice flour, black sesame, and roasted coconut. In this example, the dough is rolled into balls by hand and dropped into the oil. This shaping differs from that of the soft banana batter made in a pan with wells; within the same family of names, the method is chosen according to the fruit and the firmness of the dough.

A Snack and a Temple Offering

Unniyappam is known both as a household snack in Kerala and as a temple offering. It is also a sweet made for festivals, overlapping with the custom of eating it at home, but each temple has set ingredients, quantities, and ways of making the offering.

Kottarakkara Temple in Kollam district is known for the unniyappam offered to Ganesha. These small sweets, made with rice and bananas and fried in ghee, have also become a local specialty linked to worship at the temple.

At the Sree Maha Ganapathy Temple in Punnakkamugal, Thiruvananthapuram, the festival of Vinayaka Chaturthi, which celebrates the birth of Ganesha, is held in the month of Chingam. During this festival, around August–September, Unniyappam Moodal is held, in which the deity’s image is covered with sweets made from rice flour, jaggery, and other ingredients.

At the Sree Maha Ganapathy Temple in Kidangoor, Kottayam district, unniyappam and modaka are also offered for the same celebration in the month of Chingam. This temple was built in 1995, and the custom of these offerings has been carried on even at temples founded in modern times. Whether it is a single piece bought for daily worship or sweets offered together at a festival celebrating the god’s birth, they share the small form that is also familiar in homes.

Neyyappam, a closely related sweet fried in ghee, also uses a rice-and-sugar batter. Unniyappam is well known for its small round shape made in a dedicated pan with wells and for its batter with fruit ground into it.

An old iron pan for unniyappam. Its multiple wells hold one batch of batter. Photographed in 2022; the date the pan was made is unknown. Photo: Vis M. Source: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Image not modified.

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