Sweet paniyaram

Sweet paniyaram / Inippu kuzhi paniyaram is always welcome in our home like any other sweet.  I started making it often after seeing my MIL preparing it some years ago. I always encourage her over phone to make it for festivals, as this is her signature dish .

Ingredients:

Raw rice (pacharisi) - 1 cup
idly rice (puzhungal arisi) - 2 tbsp
black gram lentil (ulunthu paruppu) - 2 tbsp
water - 1/4 cup
coconut - 2 tbsp
salt - 1/4 tsp

baking soda - 1/2 tsp

jaggery (brown sugar) - 1/2 cup or little more.
water - 1/2 cup (for jaggery)
cardamom powder - 1/8 tsp

ghee / oil -  as per need

We may need :
kuzhi paniyara kal (puff pancake pan)
fork / skewer

Method:
Soak the rice and dhal together for 4 hours. Grind to a fine paste with 1/4 cup water, 1/4 tsp salt, coconut. It should be like idly batter.  Let it stand for 4-5 hours. No need to ferment like idly, but this duration gives soft paniyaram.

Mix jaggery with 1/2 cup water and bring it to a boil. Switch off, let it dissolve. Filter and remove any impurities. Let it cool.  Add it to the prepared batter with cardamom and mix  well.
(This batter can be kept refrigerated now for further use).

Just before preparing the paniyaram, add the baking soda, mix well and let it rest for 5 minutes.

Heat a paniyarakkal (paniyaram pan / puff pancake pan). Add oil/ ghee till 1/2 of the depth of each hole (first time only, then 1 tsp in each hole will do). Let it get hot.

Then pour paniyaram mix in each hole till 3/4. Put a lid and cook covered. It takes about a minute.
Reduce heat to the minimum and wait till its cooked on one side.
Click to see 'how to make paniyaram' in my unniappam post.
Then with the help of a wooden skewer (vadai kambi) or fork, gently flip the paniyaram.
Let them cook the other side too.

Then take them out and drain the excess oil using a kitchen towel.

Sweet Paniyaram is ready!

Serving suggestion:

Serve as snack..
Makes 21 paniyaram
(7 hole paniyaram pan X 3 times)

Note:

This sweet paniyaram can be  prepared  by deep frying instead of using a pan also.
Ghee or butter should be used instead of oil to get the most delicious sweet paniyaram.

Icing.

Usually I buy a pack of icing for most of my cakes. But from this moment I have decided to make my own. So for this Easter I made cream cheese frosting and butter cream icing. I wanted a low calorie cream cheese frosting for my cupcakes and an 'icing tool friendly' butter cream icing. While doing this only I realized how easy and healthy it is to make icings at home. The following recipes may not be for a professional but works out the best for me.

 Easter cake with basket-weave icing and fondant flowers.

Butter cream icing:

In mass production they would add vegetable shortening to buttercream icing, to get smooth flowing cream for cake professionals. But I didn't add shortening, as I wanted to share it with some adorable kids too. The finish was very good and it tasted extremely good, except for the fact that this buttercream icing will dry-out in few days. So it is better to finish the cake within 3 days after icing. Other than that I didn't face any challenges in doing the basket-weave icing. It was as flowy as the store-bought. Also we can keep the excess icing in air-tight container for a month in fridge. Before icing keep in room temperature till it is smooth ,add a tbsp milk if it is dry.

Primary crumb coating before real icing.

After this crumb coating allow it to dry for 1 hour. Then do a more polished outer cover icing. After that start with the favorite design. I made a basket weave pattern.

Click to see tutorial. Basketweave tip # 48 is used here.

For rope icing, Star tip 18 is used.  Click to see tutorial.

Cutting the cake on Easter eve, after attending the mass.

Ingredients:

Butter - 1/2 cup (1 stick)
confectioner's sugar - 4 cup
(for rose and decorations use 3 cups of powders sugar)
milk - 1 tbsp
vanilla extract - 1/2 tsp
salt - a pinch
food color - if needed

Bring butter to room temperature by leaving it in counter top. First beat the butter to fluffy. (I did manually using a fork, but a mixer is good for this). SIFT the sugar and add to butter. Again mix well with other ingredients to fluffy. Butter cream icing is ready!

Cream cheese frosting:

For the cupcakes I prepared cream cheese frosting. I wanted it to be on the tart side. so halved the prescribed sugar level and still it tasted yummy. 1:1 sugar with zero calorie sweetener is also possible, I hope. We can refrigerate this icing for nearly 2 weeks, keep out for 1 hour to get the texture and pipe-out before serving.

Prepared this icing few days earlier and kept refrigerated.

Carrot cupcake with cream cheese frosting.

Ingredients:
Cream cheese - 8 oz (1 pack)
unsalted butter - 8 tbsp (1 stick)
confectioner's sugar - 4 cup
vanilla extract - 1 tsp

Bring cheese and butter to room temperature by leaving them in counter top not any means (this is important). Mash together the cheese and butter. Sift the sugar and add it along with vanilla essence. Mix well. Enough to frost 2 to 3 dozen cupcakes (1 tbsp icing per cake). Makes one tub (US) frosting.

Fondant flowers:

I bought Wilton's readymade rolled fondant. Then got some videos in Youtube to learn fondant rose and calla lily.
The white daisy flowers are my own creation:)
Next time I should try some homemade fondant.
Click to see for video on rose flower making by icing / frosting.