Dadar Unti (Crepes with Palm Sugar-Coconut Filling)

One of most popular Indonesian snacks. Crepes with sweet coconut filling, from palm sugar-simmered coconut flakes. The combination of plain, a bit salty crepes and the sweet filling is just lovely. It is quite rich, though. I can't eat much of them in one sitting even when I am accompanied by a good cup of black tea. Let's consider that as a portion control then.

A note about palm sugar: look for one that has a high ratio of palm to cane sugar. The ones with more cane sugar will cost less, but it will have a paler colour and it will have less intense taste of palm sugar.

What if my palm sugar is too dark? I usually start with half the amount, and see what happens. If it is not dark enough, I'll keep adding more palm sugar, but if it gets too dark, I'll switch to white sugar. If you only want a hint of palm sugar taste, but still prefers to have a dark mixture, use brown sugar in part of the total amount. It involves quite some eyeballing, actually, since I have never seen a generalized standard of palm sugar, unlike what we have for brown and white sugars.

Dadar Unti
for the crepes:
120 gr plain flour
320 ml thin coconut milk or water
1 egg
1/4 tsp salt
pandan paste or green food coloring (optional)
butter or oil, to grease

1. Combine flour and salt in a medium bowl.
2. Make a hole in the center. Add egg, coconut milk, and pandan paste or green food coloring, if using. Whisk until batter is no longer lumpy. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
3. Preheat a small nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Grease with butter. Pour 1/4 cup of batter. Swirl to cover base. Cook until crepe starts to pull away from pan. Transfer to a plate. Repeat with remaining batter.

notes:
- adjust the amount of batter per crepe with your pan size
- to prevent crepes from sticking to each other, place a sheet of parchment paper between crepes

for the filling:
75 gr dessicated coconut
75 gr palm sugar (or brown sugar if you can't get palm sugar), thinly sliced
1 pandan leaf or 1 tsp pandan extract
50 ml coconut milk

1. Heat palm sugar and coconut milk in a nonstick pan over medium-low heat until dissolved.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients. Press down the dessicated coconut so that it soaks up the sugar mixture.
3. Cook until coconut mixture starts to dry up.