for making the starter

• 2 tablespoons rice flour
• 2 cups water

Instructions

• Blend the coconut milk with cooked rice in a blender until smooth. Keep this aside.

to make the starter

• In a small sauce pan, mix together 2 tablespoons of rice flour with very little water (from the 2 cups of water) to make a smooth mixture without any lumps.
• Add the remaining of 2 cups of water to the sauce pan, mix well and bring the mixture to a boil, stirring and cooking in medium heat. Once the mixture starts boiling, reduce the heat and cook for another 1 minute, stirring continuously to get a smooth porridge like mixture. Keep this aside.

to make the yeast mixture

• Add the yeast to the 1 cup of warm water (you can microwave water for about 30 seconds in a microwave safe bowl) and also add the sugar to the cup. Cover it and let the yeast mixture sit for about 10 to 15 minutes so it will form a frothy mixture. After 10 minutes, mix the yeast mixture with a spoon. Keep this yeast mixture also aside.

to prepare the batter

• In a large bowl, add the 2 cups of rice flour.
• Transfer the starter (cooked porridge like mixture we made) to the dry flour mixture and mix together evenly, you will get a crumbly mixture by doing this.
• Add the blended coconut milk mixture also little by little to this flour mixture and mix very well.
• Add the yeast mixture to this, mix very well.Now transfer the contents to a food processor or blender and add enough water for grinding (I used about 2 cups, but make sure the batter is not too runny, it should be about the consistency of dosa batter so start with little water initially).
• If its difficult to grind the batter in one batch, you can do it in multiple batches. I usually grind about half of the batter together, and do the rest in a second batch.
• Transfer the batter to a container or vessel, mix everything well. Close the container and let it sit for at least a couple of hours or about three hours (its good to leave it overnight or for 8 hours for even better results) for fermentation.
• While making the batter this way, the batter usually starts to rise with in an hour. Once the batter is fermented you can start making the appam.

to make the appams

• Add enough salt to the batter, mix very well.
• Heat a non stick pan or iron skillet (if needed you may grease with a little oil), add one ladle of batter.
• As the batter spreads, cover the pan with a lid and cook in medium heat for a couple of minutes.
• As the appam is cooked, if you open the pan you can see that holes have formed on top of the appam (pancake) and once its completely cooked, you can easily transfer it from the pan using a spatula and transfer it to the serving plate.
• Similarly cook all appams until the batter is all over.
• Alternatively, you can use a traditional appam pan or appam chatti and follow the traditional method of adding the batter and swirling it, then covering with lid and cook so the edges will be crispy and inside will be soft.Serve the delicious appam with egg curry, vegetable stew or any curry of your choice!

Notes

•  If you do not have coconut milk, you may grind about ¾ cup of grated or shredded coconut very well with 1.5 cups of water, make sure to blend it until very smooth with the cooked rice if using and add it to the rice flour mixture to prepare the batter.