Coconut Modak Recipe
A traditional, authentic Maharashtrian festive sweet featuring steamed rice flour dumplings filled with a luscious center of fresh coconut and melted jaggery.
Ingredients
- 1 cup Rice flour Preferably Modak special rice flour
- 1 Cup Water
- 1 tsp Lard and oil clarified butter
- ¼ tsp Salt
For the Sweet Coconut Filling:
- 1.5 Cups Freshly grated coconut
- 1 Cup Grated jaggery
- 1 tsp of Poppy seeds khus khus
- ½ tsp Green cardamom powder
- 1 tbsp Chopped nut mixture cashews and almonds
Instructions
- In a deep saucepan, heat one cup of water until it boils, add the ghee and salt, lower the heat, add the rice flour quickly with constant stirring until all of the water is absorbed, cover with a tight-fitting lid and steam for 10 minutes.
- In this step, the dough is rested while the poppy seeds are roasted in a separate pan for 1 minute. The freshly grated coconut & grated jaggery are roasted for 5-7 minutes, until the jaggery melts and turns into a sticky, thick filling, after which the cardamom powder and the nuts are added.
- Transfer the warm rice dough to a large platter, moisten hands with water/ghee and knead thoroughly for 5 minutes to get a smooth, completely pliable, crack-free rice ball.
- Fill the modak mould with a little bit of the smooth rice dough, smooth it out with your hands and press it against the sides so that a hollow is formed, and then fill in this hollow with a little bit of the cooled coconut mixture.
- Cover the bottom base of the mould with a small amount of excess rice dough, open the mould slowly to take out the shaped modak, and repeat step 5 for the remaining rice dough; then steam all the modak for 10-12 minutes.
Notes
- Follow the exact proportions of water to flour as written on the package for Rice Dough, as this will prevent the casing from drying out or becoming mushy.
- Turn off the stove when the mixture is still runny, as overcooked filling will harden when it cools down and be impossible to chew.
- Do not stack the modaks in the steaming basket so they may stick and tear apart because the pleats are so delicate.