This sweetmeat is most likely the most boring and dullest sweetmeat there is out there. It has no colour and if you are not used to the texture, you will not enjoy it trust me. I associate this sweetmeat with old people.

My parents I would have to say are old, because they love kolkutter. We never make it on a normal day. This sweetmeat in our household is reserved for prayer time. When you see the Indian rice stamper being dragged out of storage, you know what is going to be made.

In the past my mother would grind her white rice on the stone, or hummai as we Indians know it. It weighs a ton and is a nightmare to clean in the sink and for those that have a dishwasher, this will not fit in there either. There is no easy way out of cleaning this stone, it requires both elbow grease and strong back muscles. I have given myself lower back pain from trying to act like tarzan and picked up the stone without bending my knees. But we have moved with the times and are now buying ready ground rice flour. So much easier, I tell you.

Every prayer this is made, my mother makes these rice sweetmeats, I have never really taken an interest in making it or learning how to make it, for me the texture seems to be glutinous and stiff and not sweet. In my eyes if the name has the word sweet in it, then it should at least be sweet on your tongue. Am I right or am I wrong?

When my mother makes kolkutter she doubles the mixture, she uses half to make the sweetmeat and the other half she makes ghee lamps with, she also makes it in her steamer that whistles till all hours of the morning.

I was paging through Instagram, looking for inspiration to make something that I had never made before and I kept coming across pictures of kolkutter. I read through the ingredients and the method and even watched the youtube video attached and it seemed like a pretty simple recipe, I had just received my Spice Emporium order, so my Indian ingredient stash had been replenished. My own steamer was sitting on top of the cupboard. Yes, I had to go out and buy my own before lockdown, because I wanted to learn to make idli and I asked my mother if I could use hers.

Seeing as idly was eggless so there would be no harm, she shut me down and told me straight NO. If she caught me using it she would make me buy her a new one as that was for the prayers only and not for me to play with. HMMM, she has no faith in me I tell you, how am I going to learn if she won’t share with me??? I found out that the inside of the steamer was sold separately at our local spice store, so I bought the inners.

Two days after buying the inners I couldn’t find them. I thought I accidently threw it out so I kept quiet about it and went online and bought the complete steamer from Spice emporium and when it arrived, my mother couldn’t contain herself and blurted out that she stole the inners I had bought, because it was still new and clean so she could use it for prayers and had thrown her inners away because it had broken, and she thought this was okay???

If the roles were reversed and I had to do what she did with her prayer pots and pans, she would have whipped my behind and made me replace the item. I don’t think this situation where I have to buy stuff to practice with and then someone steals them without my permission is fair; just wait till my mother is asleep. I have been eyeing her big mixing dishes that she keeps on top of the cupboards. Just you wait and see tit for tat and butter for fat.

Today seemed like a good day to pot around in the kitchen and have a go at making this tasteless old persons sweetmeat.

The recipe was easy, just add a whole bunch of ingredients to a bowl, mix, shape and them pop into a steamer and steam for 10 minutes. I also thought that the shaping would be this complicated thing, but it is really simple, just shape between your fingers in the palm of your hand.

Let me just say I have never steamed before and boy did I battle to firstly get the lid off the pot and then I was such a bright spark, I turned the lid sideways while lifting, like you do when you cook so that the water falls back into to the food, but unlike cooking the kolkutta didn’t need this extra water and the first few tries had to be pitched without anyone knowing.

After the first few water mishaps, it was all smooth sailing.

The verdict, I loved it, I can’t remember why I was not a fan of this sweetmeat in the first place. Maybe I ate a bad kolkutta when I was younger and was scarred for life. Now I am a changed women and I loved it.

My father liked it, although he said it could be softer for his teeth and my mother, well she was over the moon and how do you like this plagiarism, she took my recipe to use. The unfairness in this family, she better reference me when she hands out kolkutta or else I will go shopping in her prayers pots, oh actually she did say it was a bit too sweet for her, but I think she was a bit delusional because it was not sweet at all.

Ingredients:

• ½ x cup desiccated coconut.
• 1/3 x raw almonds, ground.
• 1 ½ x cups rice flour.
• 1 x tsp elachi powder.
• 80g x butter, melted.
• 1/3 x cup castor sugar.
• ½ x tsp nutmeg powder.
• Pinch of salt.
• 1/8 x cup klim powder.
• 1/8 x cup sesame seeds.
• ½ tin or 193g x condense milk.
• Method:
• Add all the ingredients into a bowl and using your hands, mix well.
• Grab about a gold ball size of the mixture and roll it in the palms of your hand to shape the mixture.
• Make a fist motion, ensuring that the dough is under your fingers.
• Open your hands and the kolkutter is shaped.
• Repeat this process this all the mixture has been shaped.
• Place the kulkutter in the steamer and steam for 10 minutes, nothing longer or it will dry in the middle once it has cooled.
• After steaming, place the kulkutter on a cooling rack to cool completely before enjoying.