Kumbilappam

Kerala's steamed jackfruit cones: ripe jackfruit cooked with jaggery, worked into rice flour with coconut and cardamom, and steamed in cones of fragrant edana leaf

Origin: Kerala, India

From the journey of Jackfruit.

Kumbilappam takes its name from its shape, a kumbil or cone: a sweet dough of ripe jackfruit cooked with jaggery and worked into rice flour with grated coconut and cardamom, spooned into cones rolled from the leaves of the edana tree, and steamed. The same dough folded flat inside a banana leaf is chakka ada. It is a sweet of the season, made when the ripe fruit is abundant and fragrant, and a jar of chakka varatti lets it be made later in the year. The leaf is the point. Edana, or vayana, is Cinnamomum malabatrum, a wild cinnamon of the Western Ghats, whose leaves are still gathered from the forest, and as the cake steams it takes on their scent of cinnamon. It grows in the same forests in which botanists place the jackfruit's own wild home, so that the fruit and the wrapper of kumbilappam share a homeland in the hills above Kerala.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 400 g ripe jackfruit bulbs, seeded and chopped, or 250 g chakka varatti
  • 150 g dark jaggery, grated
  • 60 ml water
  • 1 tbsp ghee
  • 180 g roasted fine rice flour
  • 80 g freshly grated coconut
  • 0.5 tsp ground cardamom
  • 1 pinch salt

To Wrap

  • 12 edana (vayana) leaves, washed, or squares of banana leaf

Method

  1. Melt the jaggery in the water and strain it. Cook the chopped jackfruit in the syrup with the ghee over a moderate heat for about 10 minutes, stirring and mashing, until it is a thick pulp. Leave to cool.
  2. Work the rice flour, coconut, cardamom, and salt into the jackfruit pulp to make a soft, thick dough that holds its shape on a spoon.
  3. Roll each edana leaf into a cone and pin the overlap with a sliver of the leaf's own midrib or a toothpick. Fill each cone about three-quarters full and fold the top over.
  4. Stand the cones upright in a steamer and steam for 20 to 25 minutes, until the dough is firm.
  5. Let them cool for a few minutes, then unwrap at the table.

Notes

Edana leaves are hard to find outside Kerala. Bay leaves are not a substitute; banana leaf gives a different but good result. The cones keep for a day, and are also eaten cold.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

Mapping Culinary History

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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