Giraffe & Mickey Mouse Dosa or Pancake

One of the joys of fatherhood is the opportunity to make food for kids that is appealing to them. Jaya is rather finicky with her food, and makes me jump through hoops to eat anything that is put in front of her! Then one day I had a brilliant stroke of imagination...how about enlisting Jaya's favorite characters in the task of keeping Jaya well fed? Viola! Out emerges Animal Dosas!

I admit others have thought of this idea before (Animal Crackers, anyone?), but this one involved me having to learn how to pour dosa batter on the skillet in such a way that it retained animal shapes. First one was Mickey Mouse (sorry Disney!) but now, my mastery has gone further into the animal kingdom, and the Giraffe below is an example of just that!

So, how does one make it? Here is the recipe...
Rice: 2 cups
Urad dal: 1 cup (found in Indian grocery stores)
Salt to taste
Skillet, Blender, Oil

Soak Rice and Urad Dal separately overnight. Next morning grind to a fine batter. Add sufficient water to make the final consistency pan cake batter like. Cover the batter and leave it in a warm place (such as an oven with pilot lamp) overnight for fermentation. The next day it should taste sour doughy which means that the batter has nicely fermented. The batter may have also slightly risen during the night. Mix the batter well and add salt to taste.

Making the Mickey Mouse Dosa (Pancake)

On a hot skillet, pour a small quantity of oil and wipe it with a wet cloth. Do this carefully as the skillet is hot and the wet cloth and hot oil combination makes the oil crackle! (don't ask me why I do this - my mother told me this is how is done!)

Take a spoonful of the batter and pour on a hot skillet such that it looks like a nice round pancake. Before the pancake (lets call it pancake 1) gets cooked, pour a little batter just beyond the upper edge of the pancake on the right side till it meets the pancake 1, to make the right ear. Quickly, pour some more batter on the upper left side of pancake 1 to make the second ear. The trick is to pout the batter quickly enough for the three packages to merge into one. Otherwise the ears will fall off when you flip the pancake!

Pour some oil around the edges of the pancake and cover for a couple of minutes. When the pancake is cooked, flip it over carefully without breaking the ears. A minute or two later, the mickey mouse dosa is ready!!

Serve with some sort of chutney - I prefer coconut chutney, but you can serve any chutney found in the Indian grocery store. Kids love to eat this pancake with butter too, so you could just give them a dolop of butter on top of the pancake and they would be perfectly satisfied!

Interesting thing is, now we have Jaya's friends coming over to eat mickey mouse dosa and giraffe dosa! Not only do I get compliments on the dosas, I often get requests to make various other animals! I'll admit that sometimes the requests are difficult to satisfy. But as you can see from the Giraffe dosa, intricate animal dosas are indeed possible! Its just a matter of practice!