Your Cart is Empty
Kadabu is a sweet dumpling usually prepared on Ganesha Chaturthi, a Hindu festival honoring the elephant god Ganesh. The dumplings are made with a variety of different flours, including rice, semolina, and all-purpose. Fillings range from simple jaggery (unrefined sugarcane), coconut, and ghee to more involved preparations of cooked and sweetened dals. Kadabu is either steamed or fried.
My recipe for kadabu is strongly influenced by my love for both apple pie and my friend Brigitte Helzer’s Alsatian tart dough. I have adapted her recipe to include Indian semolina flour or Cream of Wheat. The kadabu are filled with apples, ginger, coconut, jaggery, saffron, and spices and are baked as opposed to being fried and steamed. You will have more apple filling than you need, but leftovers go wonderfully on ice cream for a quick dessert. — from Vibrant India: Fresh Vegetarian Recipes from Bangalore to Brooklyn by Chitra Agrawal. Buy this book from Penguin Random House, Indiebound, or Amazon.
Reprinted with permission from Vibrant India: Fresh Vegetarian Recipes from Bangalore to Brooklyn by Chitra Agrawal, copyright © 2017. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Photography credit: Erin Scott © 2017
Combine the semolina and all-purpose flours, salt, and butter in a food processor. Add the ice water slowly while pulsing until the dough gets clumpy. Lay a piece of plastic wrap on the counter. Empty the dough onto the plastic wrap and gather it together. Do not overhandle it. Fold the plastic wrap over the dough, and put it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Melt the ghee in a sauté pan over medium heat. Add the apples to the pan. Stir and sauté until just starting to soften, a few minutes. Stir in the jaggery. Add the grated ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, saffron, and salt. Continue to cook and stir until the apples start to break down, about 4 minutes. Stir in the coconut and cook for another minute. Stir in the lemon juice and turn off the heat. Transfer the mixture to a plate to cool completely.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a sheet pan and set aside.
Divide the dough into 16 pieces. On a floured surface, roll out a piece of dough to a circle 1⁄8 inch thick and 4 inches in diameter. Place 1 tablespoon of filling in the center. Fold the dough in half. Press down at the seam to seal, and use a fork to make indentations all along the seam. Place the pie on the prepared sheet pan. Repeat with the rest of the dough and filling.
Brush each pie with cream. Then score each with a knife. Bake until the pies are golden brown and lightly toasted, 25 to 30 minutes. Serve warm.
