Guest Post : Coconut Jaggery Crepes with Kithul Treacle from Farwin Simaak of Love and Other Spices

I come back with a lovely guest post from my friend Farwin Simaak of Love and other spices. She's one of many friends I met through food blogging world. Though we live miles apart but we have a connection, our love of yummy foods, we have same passion in food photography and (of course) we love blogging. :) Every country has traditional dishes, and knowing that Farwin come from Sri Lanka, I offered her to do a guest post and this sweet lady said yes without a doubt. With all humility, I plead to her to cook something traditional from her country. After waiting in curiosity, I received her mail of the post in my mailbox ! She cooked a Sri Lankan dish, Coconut Jaggery Crepes with Kithul Treacle. It's a Sri Lankan crepe with coconut filling. Sounds very interesting.

For more Sri Lankan recipes, please head over to her blog. Thank you for the post and beautiful photos, Farwin. This is lovely, indeed. Now, let's begin the journey to the first Sri Lankan cuisine on my blog.

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When Tika asked me to do a guest post on her site about a traditional Sri Lankan dish, I was thrilled. I met the talented Tika in Facebook and instantly drawn to her site. Her food photography is amazing and her passion for it shines through each and every one of her photographs. And this warm and generous lady has another blog dedicated to food photography tips for aspiring newbies like us. Thanks Tika for this opportunity, I'm honored to be here.

Love and other Spices is my journal, where I document my love for food and cooking, from the exotic Sri Lankan dishes to the modern bakes and goodies. Although I had several traditional recipes in mind, I wanted to feature this sweet dish I absolutely loved growing up.

A thin crepe roll filled with coconut, jaggery and nut filling and served with treacle on the side. This is a breeze to whip up and was a regular during our tea time snacks. I remember coming home after playing outside with friends asking a snack to munch with my tea. My mom or aunt would then hurry to the kitchen to crush the jaggery, my granny would grate the coconuts and within minutes the filling is made. While the coconut mix is coming together on the stove, the batter for the crepe is whisked and a spoonful of batter is swirled to coat a heated pan. Once the crepes are cooked on both sides and dropped on to a plate, my job is to keep the filling and roll it tight and stack it neatly to serve.

The treacle is served along side to drizzle on the crepes, if you prefer a bit of extra sweetness. This is a completely sugar free and healthy recipe if you can swap the white flour to whole wheat flour.

"Kithul" jaggery and treacle are our natural sweeteners. We use it in almost all our desserts."Kithul" is variety of palm tree growing in the Asian tropics. The sweet sugary sap obtained by tapping the young "Kithul" flowers are then used to make a unique and aromatic syrup called 'Treacle' which is similar to maple syrup. The treacle is heated up to make molds of caramelized treacle called 'Jaggery'. Coconut shells are used as molds,so the jaggery takes the shape of half sphere. The hardened jaggery is then crushed,grated or shaved for use.

If you don't have access to jaggery, you can use brown sugar. Use about 1/3 of a cup in the beginning and increase accordingly to suit your tastebuds. The Kithul treacle can be swapped for any kind of treacle or syrup.

Coconut Jaggery Crepes with Kithul Treacle

Ingredients:

Batter

1 cup All Purpose Flour

1 cup milk

1 egg

pinch of salt

Filling

1 cup fresh grated coconut

125 g grated jaggery

few pods of cardamoms crushed

pinch of salt

Chopped nuts of your choice(I have used pistachio and cashew nuts)

Treacle to serve

Method:

Measure the flour and sift it into a bowl. In a separate bowl,whisk the milk and egg together. Mix the wet ingredients with the flour and whisk till you get a clump free batter. Add salt.

Heat a non stick pan and spray with some oil. Add about 3 tablespoons of batter to the pan and swirl it to coat the pan. Once the crepe has been cooked flip onto the other side with a spatula and cook till light brown spots appear. Remove from fire and repeat with the remaining batter.

For the filling,heat the grated jaggery in a saucepan over medium fire. Once the the jaggery starts to melt, add the coconut and cook till the mixture comes together. Add the cardamoms, pinch of salt and cook further for 5 minutes. Add the nuts and remove from fire.

To assemble, lay the crepe and place the filling on a side. Don't place the filling all the way up to the edges of pancake lest it should fall from the sides. Roll the crepe tightly.  Serve with more nuts on top and with a drizzle of treacle.