Jaje Dadar – Balinese rolled coconut pancakes

If there’s one thing better than a cup of coffee on a sunny Sunday afternoon, it’s a cup of kopi Bali (Balinese coffee). Balinese coffee is strong and sweet, and never complete without ‘jaje’. ‘Jaje’ is the Balinese word for ‘cake’ or ‘sweet’ and the Balinese use it to refer to a whole array of sweet treats and snacks.

This recipe is for a common kind of snack that goes perfectly with kopi Bali. Jaje Dadar – ‘kue dadar gulung’ in other parts of Indonesia – are thin pancakes stuffed with sweet coconut. The pancakes in the picture are green and that colour can be achieved by adding food colouring or pandan leaves if you want. However, to keep things simple, this recipe doesn’t use colouring so if you follow it, your pancakes will be the normal colour.

Ingredients:
For the pancakes:
200g plain flour
2 eggs
450ml milk
3 tablespoons of melted butter
For the filling:
50g sugar (or a little more if you like it sweeter!)
100g dessicated coconut
¼ spoon vanilla essence

Instructions:
1. Make the batter by mixing eggs and melted butter then adding the flour and milk and mixing until there are no lumps. Put the batter through a sieve and add a pinch of salt then leave in the fridge for half an hour to rest.
2. Mix the coconut and sugar and add the vanilla essence and a dash of water to hold it all together.
3. Put the mixture in a frying pan and heat while stirring until the water has gone and the sugar has combined with the coconut. Once the mixture is cooked, leave it to cool again.
4. Heat a pan to a medium temperature and grease it with a little butter. Once hot, add a spoonful of batter (which has been resting in the fridge) to the pan. Swirl the batter around the pan to form a thin pancake (like a crepe – the thinner the better) and once the bottom is cooked, turn and cook the other side. When cooked through, remove from the pan and leave to cool. Repeat the process until you’ve finished off the batter.
5. When the pancakes are cool, take a spoonful of your filling mixture and place it in a strip in the middle of the pancake. Fold the sides of the pancake in, fold the bottom up, then roll it upwards to finish it (see the diagram). Repeat the process until you have a nice big pile of pancake rolls!