Mini meduvada muffins

I get nostalgic, when I think of medu vadas. I come from a traditional mangalorean family, so obviously my dad worked in the food business. I grew up watching my mom and dad, both cook in the kitchen. Whenever my dad was off from work, we had delicacies made by him. I distinctly remember when I used to wake up in the morning as a kid and the aroma of medu vadas were wafting through the house. I knew dad was home that day and we had piping hot, crisp medu vadas for breakfast, with coconut chutney, yum!

Medu vadas always beckon me, but these days I limit fried stuff a lot. So got this idea of baking them instead of frying. I baked the prepared medu vada batter in a muffin pan. I had to do without the traditional holes of the vada. Although I was skeptical, I was surprised at the end result, it came out pretty close to it's original fried version. The fried ones would definitely taste better any day, but this recipe will satisfy your craving without any guilts later.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups urad dal split
• 3-4 green chillies chopped fine
• 1-1/2 tsp crushed pepper corn
• 1 tsp ginger chopped fine
• 8-10 curry leaves chopped
• 1-1/2 tsp cumin powder
• 1/4 tsp asafoetida
• 1 tsp baking powder
• salt as per taste
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp lime juice
• 2 tbsp cooking oil

Directions:

• Wash urad dal well and soak it in enough water, so that it is well covered even when it enlarges, for 5-6 hours.
• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
• Drain the water and grind the urad dal to a fine paste. Add water to it as needed, for grinding. 
  The paste will resemble thick cake batter.
• Add green chillies, crushed peppercorn, ginger, curry leaves, cumin powder, asafoetida, baking powder and salt. Mix well.
• Take 1 tsp lime juice and add 1/2 tsp baking soda to it. It will fizz and then add this to the batter. 
• Finally add 2 tbsp cooking oil and mix everything well.

• Spray cooking oil into each cup of the muffin pan. Pour this batter into the cups equally, so that they bake evenly.

• Place the pan in oven for around 15 minutes. Then spray the top of each medu muffin with cooking oil and at this point increase the temperature of the oven to the highest point. Bake at this temperature for around 5-10 minutes. Keep a check on the muffins at this high temperature.
• Finally do a skewer test and remove the pan from oven.
• Cool for 10 minutes and remove muffins from pan.
• Enjoy it with sambhar/ rasam and chutney.