Sri Lankan Lavariya Recipe

Ingredients:For the Filling (Pani Pol)

• Scraped Coconut – 125g
• Sugar – 125g
• Ground Cardamom – ¼ tsp
• Salt – ½ tsp
• Hot Water – ½ cup

Ingredients:For the Dough

• White String Hoppers Flour / Rice Flour – 350g
• A pinch of salt
• Oil to apply on mats
• Water

Method

• To make the filling (Pani Pol), keep a pan on the stove and put some sugar into it. Heat sugar under medium heat. When sugar heats well it gets a dark color. Don’t heat sugar more than that level. If it heats more, sugar will get a bitter taste. When sugar becomes dark brown slowly add hot water into this. When you add hot water, you need to be very careful and keep your distance with the pan.
• After that add remaining sugar. When sugar dissolves completely add ground cardamom and salt. When sugar starts bubbling add scraped coconut. Keep this little bit more on the stove until excess water evaporates and then get it out of the stove.
• To make the dough, add pinch of salt to flour and mix. Then gradually add water and mix until it comes to the correct level. When the flour becomes soft and doesn’t stick on your palms, that’s correct level.
• Apply little bit of oil on lavariya mats so that you can remove lavariya easily from the mats after steaming.
• Make a big string hopper from the dough you made and keep little bit of pani pol in the middle of the string hopper. Then fold it by keeping the edges together. This is one way of folding the lavariya. When the lavariya is folded like this it will get a shape of an asme. When getting this lavariya to your hand to keep on the mats, don’t press it too hard.
• The other way of folding lavariy is, roll lavariya while it is on the banana leave. We can slowly roll this to lavariya mat without getting it to the hand.
• Slowly and carefully keep lavariya on mats and steam until they are well cooked. After steaming press, a lavariya from your finger and see. If flour doesn’t stick to your finger they are steamed enough. It doesn’t need to steam them a lot. Steaming around 3-4 mins is more than enough.
• This tasty lavariya is a great snack for the teatime. Or else you can have them for breakfast and dinner too.