Sri Lankan Wandu Appa (Steamed Jaggery Rice Cake)
Also known as Wandu Cake
Wandu appa is a Sri Lankan steamed jaggery cake: the same fermented rice flour, coconut milk and jaggery batter that makes pani appa, poured into small cups and steamed instead of cooked in a hopper pan. It comes out soft and springy, more like a sweet bun than a pudding, with the dark caramel taste of kithul or coconut jaggery running through it. This is the quick version, raised with instant yeast in about 20 minutes and steamed in an ordinary saucepan with a rack inside, so you need no special equipment at all.
Soft, bun-like steamed cakes of rice flour, coconut milk and jaggery. No oven, no steamer, just a saucepan and a few small cups.
- Total time
- 50 min
- 25 min prep · 25 min cook
- Serves
- 8 people
- Difficulty
- Beginner
- Spice level
- Mild
- Country help
- USA · UK · AU · CA substitutes included
CeylonCooking
ceyloncooking.com/recipes/wandu-appa
Sri Lankan Wandu Appa
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Nutrition
Estimated values, per serving.
About This Dish
The name tells you the whole story. Wandu is the steamer, appa is the hopper, so wandu appa is hopper batter that went into the steam instead of into a pan. Sweeten that batter with jaggery and cook it on a curved pan and you get pani appa. Pour the same thing into little cups and steam it and you get these: soft, domed, faintly springy cakes that break apart in your fingers like a fresh bun. Without the appa in the name you would probably just call it a small steamed cake, and plenty of people do.
The older way takes longer. A rice batter is left to ferment overnight, sometimes with toddy, and steamed in a proper wandu, the tiered steamer that sits over a pot. This shorter route swaps the overnight wait for instant yeast and 20 minutes on the counter, and it swaps the wandu for a cooling rack dropped into a saucepan. The result is not a compromise: the cakes still rise, still smell yeasty and sweet as they steam, and they still come out with that faint tang under the jaggery that tells you a yeast batter did the work.
It is honest, cheap food. Rice, coconut milk, jaggery and yeast, and nothing else at all: no eggs, no butter, no flour from a packet, no oven. That is why it turns up at breakfast, in lunch boxes and on tea tables all over the island, and why people who grew up with it eat it straight out of the steam with a banana in the other hand. Warm is when it is best. Left to cool it firms up, and a few minutes back over the steam brings it straight back.
The two things that decide whether yours comes out soft are the flour and the lid. Rice ground wet and sifted fine gives a batter with no grit in it, so the cakes steam smooth rather than sandy. And a cloth tied over the saucepan lid catches the condensation that would otherwise rain back down and pit the tops. Get those two right and the rest is just waiting for 20 minutes without lifting the lid, which is harder than it sounds.
Wet-Milled Rice Flour, and Why It Matters Here
Sri Lankan rice cakes and hoppers are built on rice that was soaked, then ground while damp, which is sold as wet rice flour or thetha haal piti and is quite different from the dry-milled rice flour on most supermarket shelves. Soaking softens the grain so it breaks down into much finer particles, and that fineness is what gives a steamed batter its smooth, silky body. Dry-milled flour is grittier, drinks water differently and tends to steam into something sandy and heavy.
Making it at home is simple, just slow: soak raw white rice for a couple of hours, drain it well, grind it in a blender or pound it, then sift it twice so only the finest flour goes into the batter. Anything coarse left in the sieve either gets ground again or thrown out. Packets of ready wet-milled rice flour have started showing up in shops recently, which saves the soaking and grinding entirely. If all you can get is ordinary rice flour, sift it twice and strain the finished batter, and you will get most of the way there.
What It Should Taste Like
Soft, light and springy, closer to a steamed bun than a cake, with no crust anywhere. The jaggery gives it a dark, caramel sweetness that is deep rather than sugary, the coconut milk keeps it rich and moist, and there is a faint yeasty tang underneath from the rise. It should be sweet enough to eat on its own and plain enough to eat with a banana.
Ingredients
This recipe makes 8 servings. Change the number and every amount below updates with it. Substitutes for hard-to-find items are in the sidebar.
The US button converts grams, millilitres and centimetres to ounces, cups and inches. Spoon measures stay exactly as they are.
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Batter
- Wet-milled rice flourabout 2 cups, sifted twice. Or 200 g raw white rice, soaked and ground (step 1)250 g
- Jaggeryabout 1 cup. Kithul or coconut jaggery180 g, grated
- Coconut milkabout 1 1/4 cups, warm, added a little at a time300 ml
- Instant yeast1 1/2 tsp
- Saltstirred in after the rest, not before1/4 tsp
To Steam
- Oil or butterfor the cups
- Baking parchmentcut to fit the base of each cup8 small circles
Method
Two waits, both hands-off: a couple of hours if you soak your own rice, and 20 minutes for the yeast. Everything else is about 25 minutes of work, and the steamer is a rack sitting in a saucepan.
Ready to Start Cooking?
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- 01
Soak and Grind the Rice, or Reach for the Packet
Soak 200 g of raw white rice in cold water for 2 hours, drain it thoroughly, then grind it in a blender or pound it until fine. Sift it twice, which should leave you with about 250 g of flour. If you have wet-milled rice flour already, sift it twice and start at step 2.
Soaking is what lets the grain break down finely, and draining is what stops the flour turning to paste in the blender, so give it a few minutes in the sieve before it goes in. Grind in short bursts and stop to scrape the sides down. The double sift is the part people skip and regret: anything gritty that survives it stays gritty through the steam, and you feel it in the finished cake. Grind the coarse bits left in the sieve again, or keep them for something else.
Tip: Spread the drained rice on a cloth for ten minutes before grinding. Damp rice grinds fine, wet rice clumps.
- 02
Dissolve the Jaggery in the Coconut Milk
Grate the jaggery, then stir it into the warm coconut milk until it has completely dissolved and the milk is a deep toffee brown with no grains left in it.
Jaggery does not melt evenly once it is in a thick batter, so it goes into the liquid first. Grated jaggery dissolves in a minute or two in warm coconut milk. A chunk of it will still be sitting there ten minutes later and will end up as a dark, wet patch in one cake and nothing in the others. Kithul jaggery crumbles under your fingers and barely needs the grater. Coconut jaggery is harder and does. Taste the sweetened milk at this point, since jaggery varies a lot from block to block and this is the easiest moment to adjust.
Tip: Warm, not hot. Coconut milk hot enough to steam will knock back the yeast when the two meet in the next step.
- 03
Mix the Batter by Hand
Stir the yeast through the sifted rice flour, then pour in the sweetened coconut milk a little at a time, mixing as you go. Once it is all in, work the batter with your bare hand for a good 5 minutes until it is smooth and drops thickly off your fingers.
Use your hand rather than a spoon and skip the glove. You are feeling for lumps as much as mixing, and your fingers find them long before your eyes do, so break them against the side of the bowl as you come across them. The warmth helps too, since a cool batter is slow to wake the yeast. Five minutes feels long for what looks like a simple job, but the batter changes as you work: it loosens, turns glossy and starts to fall off your hand in a smooth ribbon instead of in blobs. That is the point to stop.
Tip: Hold back the last splash of coconut milk until you see the batter come together. You want a thick pouring batter, like a loose pancake mix.
- 04
Rest 20 Minutes, Then Salt and Strain
Cover the bowl and leave it somewhere warm for 20 minutes. Then stir in the salt with a spoon and pass the whole batter through a sieve to catch any lumps or grit.
Twenty minutes is all instant yeast needs to get going in a sweet batter, and you will see it: bubbles across the surface and a faint beery smell when you lift the cloth. The salt goes in afterwards on purpose, because salt slows yeast down and adding it at the start costs you the rise. Straining at the end is the last insurance against a gritty cake, and there is usually a spoonful of sediment left behind in the sieve. Throw that away rather than pushing it through.
Tip: In a cold kitchen, sit the covered bowl inside a cupboard or near the warm stove. A cold batter can take half an hour to move.
- 05
Rig up the Saucepan Steamer
Sit a small cooling rack inside a wide saucepan and pour in water until it just reaches the rack. Tie a clean kitchen towel over the lid, pulling the corners tight underneath, and bring the water to the boil.
This is the whole reason you do not need a steamer. The rack holds the cups clear of the water while the steam does the cooking, and the cloth over the lid catches the condensation that would otherwise drip back onto the cakes and pit their tops with wet craters. Tie the corners properly so no cloth hangs near the flame. Keep the water level below the rack, since water sloshing into the cups is exactly what the parchment in the next step is guarding against.
Tip: A wide pan beats a tall one. You want the cups in a single layer with steam moving freely around them.
- 06
Grease the Cups and Fill Them
Rub the inside of each small cup or ramekin with a little oil or butter and press a circle of parchment into the base. Stir the batter with a spoon, then pour it into the cups, filling each about two-thirds.
The parchment disc is there because the bases of the cups sit closest to the heat and that is where the batter grips hardest. A greased cup with a paper base turns out cleanly every time. Stir the batter before each pour, since it settles as it stands and the cups you fill last will otherwise be thinner than the first. Two-thirds full leaves room for the rise, and a cake that climbs over the rim loses its neat domed top.
Tip: No small cups? A greased and lined muffin tin, or one small cake tin steamed for a little longer, works just as well.
- 07
Steam for 20 Minutes, Lid Closed
Once the water is boiling hard, set the cups on the rack, cover with the cloth-tied lid and steam on medium heat for 20 minutes. Do not lift the lid while they cook.
Every peek drops the temperature in the pan and the cakes sink slightly and take longer to recover, so leave it alone and let the steam do its work. Medium heat keeps a steady flow rather than a violent boil that spits water up through the rack. If your pan is thin or the burner is fierce, check the water level at around the 15-minute mark and top it up with hot water from the kettle, since a pan that boils dry scorches fast and the smell gets into the cakes.
Tip: Set a timer and walk away. Twenty minutes untouched beats three anxious inspections every time.
- 08
Test, Turn Out and Eat Warm
Slide a skewer into the middle of one cake. If it comes out clean, they are done. If the base is still tacky, cover and give them another 2 minutes. Turn them out, peel off the parchment and eat them warm.
A cooked wandu appa is domed, matte and springs back when you press it, and the skewer test is really about the bottom, which is the last part to set. They come out of the cups easily once they have sat for a minute, and the paper lifts away with nothing stuck to it. Eat them while they are still warm and slightly steamy, when the crumb is at its softest, with a banana alongside the way most people do at home. They firm up as they cool, which is not a fault, just a signal to put them back over the steam for a few minutes.
Tip: Pull them out of the cups while warm. Left to cool inside, they sweat and the sides go damp.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
- Lifting the lid during the 20 minutes, which drops the heat and sinks the cakes.
- Steaming without a cloth over the lid, so condensation rains back down and pits the tops.
- Adding the salt before the rest instead of after, which slows the yeast and costs you the rise.
- Skipping the parchment circles, so the bases stick and tear when you turn them out.
- Dropping whole lumps of jaggery into the flour instead of dissolving them in the coconut milk first.
- Filling the cups to the brim, so the batter climbs over the edge and loses its domed top.
- Letting a thin saucepan boil dry, which scorches the base and taints the cakes.
Serving Ideas
- Warm from the steamer with a ripe banana, the way they are usually eaten at home.
- With a cup of strong Ceylon tea in the afternoon.
- With a thread of kithul treacle over the top for something sweeter.
- Alongside pani appa or plain hoppers as part of a bigger breakfast spread.
Building a whole plate around it? Start from our sri lankan party menu menu, which sets out what to cook alongside it and in what order.
Storage and Make-Ahead
Wandu appa are best warm, within an hour or two of steaming. After that they firm up. Keep them covered in the fridge for up to 3 days and steam them for 3 to 5 minutes before eating, which brings the crumb back to soft. They also freeze well for a month, wrapped once cooled. Steam from frozen until hot through. Do not microwave them dry, since they go rubbery.
Two Ways to Cook It
Buy wet-milled rice flour so you skip the soaking and grinding entirely, use instant yeast for the 20 minute rise, and steam them in a greased and lined muffin tin over a rack in your widest saucepan. Grate the jaggery finely and dissolve it in warm coconut milk before it meets the flour, and you have removed almost everything that can go wrong.
Soak white kekulu rice and grind it wet, then sift twice for a properly fine flour. Sweeten with kithul jaggery, leave the batter to ferment overnight rather than using yeast, and steam the cups in a tiered wandu over a pot. Eat them warm, straight from the steam, with a banana.
Lighter and Healthier Version
Wandu appa is already one of the gentler Sri Lankan sweets. It is steamed rather than fried, so there is no cooking oil in it at all, and it is built on rice, coconut milk and unrefined palm sugar rather than butter, eggs and white flour. There is still room to lighten it.
Cut the Jaggery Back
Take the jaggery down to two-thirds and the cakes are still clearly sweet, just gentler, and the rice and coconut come through more clearly. Taste the sweetened coconut milk before it goes into the flour and you can judge it exactly.
Use Light Coconut Milk
Light coconut milk, or full-fat thinned with water, cuts most of the fat and the crumb stays soft, since the yeast and the steam do the work rather than the richness.
Steamed, so No Oil at All
Nothing is fried here. The only fat outside the coconut milk is the trace used to grease the cups, and a parchment circle in the base means you need very little of even that.
Naturally Vegan and Gluten-Free
Grease the cups with oil rather than butter and the whole thing is plant-based. Rice flour means there is no wheat in it either, so it suits gluten-free eaters as written.
Steam Them Small
Smaller cups mean smaller portions, and two little cakes feel more generous than one large one for the same amount of batter.
Watch How to Make It
Read the steps already? Watch the whole process from start to finish to see the texture, colour and timing at each stage.
Wandu Appa Cooked the Village Way
Narrated in Sinhala (සිංහල)
A Sinhala walk-through of wandu appa, from grinding the rice to lifting the steamed cakes out of their cups.
සිංහලෙන් කෙටියෙන්
වඳු ආප්ප කියන්නේ පැණි ආප්ප හදන ලියරම කුඩා කෝප්පවලට දාලා වාෂ්පයෙන් තම්බාගන්නා කෑමක්. හාල් පිටි, පොල් කිරි සහ හකුරු, ඒ තුනයි ඕන.
වඳුවක් නැතත් කමක් නෑ. පෑන් එකක් ඇතුළට කුඩා රැක් එකක් දාලා, රැක් එකට ගෑවෙන තරමට වතුර දාලා, මූඩිය මතට රෙද්දක් තදින් බැඳගන්න. එතකොට වාෂ්පයේ වතුර ආපහු ආප්ප උඩට වැටෙන්නේ නෑ.
පිටිත් යීස්ට් එක්ක මිශ්ර කරලා, හකුරු දිය කරගත්ත පොල් කිරි ටිකෙන් ටික දාලා අතින්ම විනාඩි පහක් අනගන්න. විනාඩි විස්සක් වහලා තියලා, ඊට පස්සේ ලුණු දාලා, පෙරලා කෝප්පවලට දාගන්න. විනාඩි විස්සක් මූඩිය නොඇරම තැම්බුවාම ඉවරයි.
- සුදු කැකුළු හාල් පැය දෙකක් වතුරේ දාලා තියලා, වතුර බේරලා අඹරාගන්න
- පිටි දෙපාරක් හලාගන්න
- හකුරු ගාලා පොල් කිරි එක්ක දිය කරගන්න
- පිටිවලට යීස්ට් දාලා, හකුරු කිරි ටිකෙන් ටික දාලා අතින් විනාඩි පහක් අනගන්න
- වහලා විනාඩි විස්සක් තියලා, ලුණු දාලා පෙරාගන්න
- බටර් ගාපු කෝප්පවලට බේකින් පේපර් කෑල්ලක් දාලා ලියර දාගන්න
- වතුර උතුරනකොට කෝප්ප රැක් එකට දාලා, මධ්යම ගින්නේ විනාඩි විස්සක් තම්බාගන්න
Filmed by Traditional Wild Cooking. We did not make this video, we are linking to theirs.
Watch on YouTubeFrequently Asked Questions
Wandu appa is a Sri Lankan steamed rice cake made from rice flour, coconut milk and jaggery. Wandu means the steamer and appa means hopper, so the name says it is hopper batter that was steamed rather than cooked in a pan. The cakes come out soft, domed and springy, closer to a sweet bun than a pudding, with a dark caramel sweetness from the jaggery. They are eaten warm at breakfast, as a snack or with tea, often with a banana.
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