Servings : Makes 50
Vitumbua are a coastal east-african dish made of rice or rice flour and coconut. They are delightfully delicious! I made the miniature version using an appam pan.
Ingredients
- 1 3/4 cups thick/heavy tui/coconut milk
- 1 1/2 cups rice (the thick variety if possible, don't use the thin long grain if you can avoid it, we need these to be able to mash up nicely)
- 1 cup sugar (level)
- 1 tsp. instant yeast
- 1/2 tsp. cardamom powder
- oil for frying
Instructions
Please click here for step by step instructions with pictures on how to make these mini vitumbuas.
Soak the rice overnight, and then drain completely. Make sure no water remains in the rice, and you can do this by leaving it in a sieve to drain for as long as you can.
Put the rice, coconut milk, yeast and cardamom powder into your blender and blend until completely smooth. This may take a while but stick to it. Keep blending for a full minute at a time, giving the blender a rest of a few seconds between pulses. Once you're satisfied that the rice has been mashed completely and your batter is smooth, pour it out into a bowl, cover and set aside to rise for 30-60mins.
Once risen, add the sugar and mix it in using your hand. Make sure the sugar is completely mixed into the batter.
Now put some oil in your Appam pan or any tiny karai and heat it up. Then add batter using a spoon into your pan and fry the vitumbua, first on one side and then turn it over to do the other side until golden on both sides.
Serve warm! 🙂
i can substitute the rice with rice flour right?
Yes you can!
Salaams! Love your recipes mashaAllah!! Do you have the recipe for regular sized vitumbua? If not, what do you change to make regular vitumbua? I have never cooked nor tasted them before, but my husband is Kenyan and said these are the mini size that they are usually bigger…just wondering…thanks 🙂
W/Salaam, the same batter is used for making the bigger ones too. Those are made in miniature sized kadai/karai pan, one at a time.
do you think a 9.5 inch wok would work? We can’t find karai here…
9.5 inch sounds pretty big! The vitumbua are supposed to be around 4 inches. So try and get as small a wok as you can get.
Salams Sis! I want to make vitumbua but sina jiko la makaa kupikia, naweza kutumia kwenye gas? So ,I on the gas kwa chini then niweke the pan on top?
W/Salaam, ndio you can do that on the gas top.
Can we use rice flour bought in the store and if yes how much for this recipe
Unfortunately have never tried this with rice flour, sorry! 🙁
A.a.n thanx 4 ur tasty recipes,where can i get appam pan here at msa?
W/Salaam, I hear there is an indian utencils shop somewhere in Nyali that might have it, but cannot be sure and do not know the name of the shop. Sorry!
I saw these nonstick american
I saw these nonstick american pancake pans with four spaces about 4″ do u think it wud work coz ley are flat bottomed and the heat wud not be concentrated on the kitumbua?
Am not sure, do you have a
Am not sure, do you have a pic of the pan? It might work but they will not be rounded, they will be more like ‘vibibis’ which are also very nice flat rice flour n coconut pancakes. 🙂
If iam using the rice flour
If iam using the rice flour,Is it d same measurement!!Jazakallah in advance;)
I actually have not tried
I actually have not tried using rice flour, but I would estimate that yes, same amount should be fine.
Salaam. Hope you and your
Salaam. Hope you and your family are well with grace of almighty. Jumma mubarak. I tried these vitumbuas the taste turned out really good…big hit. Jazakallah for all these recipes. The only problem I had was that the other side after turning went flat and remained white. If I kept for long on pan they were getting burnt. Also this part didn’t have amy skin on it (hope you understand what I’m trying to mean). Where do you think I have gone wrong and please advice remedy for this. Jazakallah
W/Salaam, thank you! Did you
W/Salaam, thank you! Did you flip the vitumbua midway through cooking?
No I didn’t. I left the fist
No I didn’t. I left the fist bottom part to be cooked and turn brown, after that only I flipped them.
Assalaamun alaikum
Ramadan Kareem. I made the kitubuwas and they turned out very good and soft . But after some time they become hard . Can you please guide me what could be the reason ?