Come Covid-19 and people, especially us food bloggers and recipe developers, began the trend of crafting dishes from any ingredient.

And when I say any ingredient, I mean “any and every possible ingredient ever occurring naturally or man-made.”

And then there were a slew of chocolate bon-bons prepared in appe pan, sponge cakes in appe pan, dosa ball shots in appe pan and a few other monstrosities.

There should strictly be a limit to how much the human race can go before committing utter cruelty with/to their food in the name of experimentation. 

What the food influenzas do not realize is that a utensil is made for a specific cuisine, a region and a set of ingredients. For example, if you cook a cream/cheese-heavy sauce pasta in a wok pan, then it may get burnt. 

But I was not-so-wok”e” at that time and decided to use the appe pan to cook besan dhokla type appe. 

This could have been a disaster but it turned out to be an expected miracle!

I did not want to post the same hackneyed recipe of sooji appe that the whole world was cooking. I am different and creative (or so I thought), so I will cook something innovative. Using my dear mother’s help, I prepared the batter for besan dhokla and poured it into the heated and well-oiled appe pan. 

I was waiting for the appe balls to get fluffy but unfortunately that did not happen. Maybe because I had put the batter in smaller quantities in the moulds. 

And the besan dhokla appe also got slightly burnt from sides although they were cooked properly. I added a tempering of mustard seeds, curry leaves and green chillies. 

The theory that I have about the burnt sides is that besan/gramflour takes little time to cook as compared to sooji/durum wheat. The batter in contact with the hot pan surface will cook faster than the middle portion of the batter that is not in contact with the surface and cooks through the radiated heat.

Or maybe, one should buy an appe pan with a thicker base so that the heat is distributed evenly and the heat is retailed longer. 

The taste was good but my sister was not in agreement with me putting up the picture of “hideous burnt besan appe”! 🤓