Thinai Sweet Appam – Millet Sweet Paniyaram

Millets are the new and healthy trend in south Indian cooking now. I did get a lot of millet variety flours from India during my last visit. Have started including millets in our diet and we truly love it. This Thinai Sweet Appam is an easy and instant appam variety, perfect to make for Karthigai Deepam. Thinai is known as Foxtail millet in english. As I said this is an instant version – no soaking/grinding involved. If u want to use whole thinai/foxtail millet, pls scroll down to the tips section.

Do check my other Karthigai Deepam recipes HERE

Here is the video..

Now to the recipe..

[Preparation Time-5 mins : Cooking Time- 20 mins]

Thinai Sweet Appam Ingredients:

• Thinai/Foxtail Millet flour – 1 cup
• Rice flour – 1 tbsp (optional)
• Grated coconut – 1 tbsp
• Cooking soda – 1/8th tsp
• Jaggery – 3/4 th cup(crushed)
• Elaichi powder – a pinch
• Ghee – as needed

Method:

• Take millet flour, rice flour, grated coconut, elaichi powder & cooking soda in a wide bowl. Mix well. Keep it aside. In a pan add crushed jaggery and water just upto immersing level. Heat it until the jaggery dissolves. Bring it to a boil. No consistency is required.

• Strain the jaggery syrup and add it to the flour mixture. Mix well with a whisk so that there are no lumps. Add very little water (if needed) to bring the batter to pourable consistency.

• Heat a paniyaram pan and add ghee in all the holes. Pour the batter in each hole and cook in medium flame. Flip and cook on the other side. This will take a couple of minutes only. Remove and serve hot.

Thats it! Thinai Sweet Appam is ready!!

Serve hot!!

Tips:

1. U can add 1 mashed banana to the batter and make the Thinai Sweet Appam.
2. Adding rice flour is optional. I found that Thinai has a naturally crispy texture from outside and soft texture inside.
3. Make sure the batter consistency is right. Do not be tempted to add more water while making the jaggery syrup.
4. If at all the batter is very runny add 1 or 2 tbsps of wheat flour.
5. If u want to use whole thinai instead of thinai flour – Wash and soak thinai for 2 hours, grind smoothly with very less water. Add grated jaggery instead of jaggery syrup, rest of the ingredients as is and make appams.
6. If u do not have paniyaram pan u can shallow/deep fry them.
7. Always cook in low/medium flame, else it will burn outside and be uncooked inside.