Dadar Gulung — pandan crêpes wrapped around coconut-palm-sugar filling

i. Origin & history

Dadar gulung sits in the enormous family of Indonesian and Malaysian kue (or kuih) — the snacks, cakes and sweets sold at markets, served at gatherings and eaten between meals rather than at the end of one. The name is literal: dadar means omelette or pancake, gulung means rolled.

The filling has its own name and its own life: unti kelapa or inti kelapa, grated coconut cooked down with palm sugar until sticky and dark. It appears inside a great many other kue as well, which is a useful reminder that this family of sweets works by combining a small vocabulary of components — coconut, palm sugar, pandan, glutinous rice, banana leaf — in different arrangements rather than by inventing new ingredients.

The pancake itself is a crêpe, and the format almost certainly reflects European contact — the Dutch presence in the Indonesian archipelago left a substantial mark on its baking and its sweets, and the thin rolled pancake is a recognisably European form. What was done with it is entirely local: pandan for colour and aroma, coconut and palm sugar for the filling.

Regionally it is essentially the same thing under different names. In Malaysia it is often kuih ketayap or kuih dadar; in parts of Indonesia it may be called kue dadar. In Dutch-Indonesian cooking it survives as dadar gulung unchanged, one of many kue that travelled to the Netherlands and stayed.

ii. Pandan, and the two ways to get the colour

The green is the first thing anyone notices, and it is worth understanding where it should come from. Traditional dadar gulung is coloured and scented with pandan — screwpine leaf — which is blitzed with water and strained to give a green, grassy, faintly vanilla-and-coconut-scented extract.

Fresh pandan extract gives a soft, slightly olive green, not the vivid emerald of the ones you see in photographs. That brighter colour usually comes from bottled pandan paste, which contains added colouring. Neither is wrong — paste is used constantly in home and commercial kitchens across the region — but if you are working with fresh leaves and wondering why your crêpes are muted, that is why. Some cooks use fresh leaves for aroma and a drop of paste for colour, which is a reasonable compromise.

The batter is a thin crêpe batter and behaves like one: it needs to rest so the flour hydrates and the gluten relaxes, or the pancakes tear when you lift them. Thirty minutes is enough; an hour is better. Coconut milk in the batter is standard and makes the crêpes more tender but also more fragile.

The filling has a clear endpoint. Grated coconut simmered with palm sugar and a little water goes through a wet stage, then a syrupy stage, then finally turns sticky and starts to clump together and pull away from the pan. Stop there. Taken further it dries out and turns sandy; stopped too early it stays wet and will soak through the crêpe and split it.

iii. Ingredients

Makes 12 servings · scroll the side panel to adjust

• 100 g plain flour
• 1 large egg
• 250 ml coconut milk
• 3 tbsp pandan juice
• 1 tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp neutral oil, plus more for the pan
• 150 g freshly grated coconut
• 100 g palm sugar, grated
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 pandan leaf, knotted

Fresh or frozen grated coconut is far better than desiccated, which is drier and will not take up the palm sugar syrup the same way; if desiccated is all you have, rehydrate it in a little warm water first. Gula melaka or gula jawa — palm sugar in hard discs — gives the filling its smoky depth, and brown sugar is a poor substitute. For the batter, pandan leaves blitzed with water and strained are the traditional colouring; bottled pandan paste is the common shortcut and gives the brighter colour most people expect. A pinch of salt in the filling is not optional — without it the palm sugar reads as flat.

iv. Method

1. For the filling: combine grated coconut, palm sugar, water, pandan leaf and a pinch of salt in a small pan. Cook over low heat, stirring, for 8-10 minutes until the mixture is glossy, sticky and the sugar has fully melted. Cool.
2. Whisk flour, salt and sugar. Whisk in the egg, then gradually the coconut milk and pandan juice to a smooth, thin batter — looser than crêpe batter. Rest 15 minutes.
3. Heat a small non-stick pan over medium flame. Brush with oil. Pour in 3 tbsp batter, swirl to coat the base in a thin lacy disc. Cook 60 seconds — the edges should lift cleanly. Slide onto a plate; the top will set without flipping.
4. Place a tablespoon of filling along one edge of each crêpe. Fold in the sides, then roll up tightly into a tube. Serve at room temperature.

v. Tips & common mistakes

• Rest the batter. At least thirty minutes after mixing. Unrested batter makes crêpes that tear as you lift and roll them, which is the most common failure with this recipe.
• Strain the batter. Pandan extract carries fibrous bits and flour makes lumps. A quick pass through a sieve is the difference between smooth crêpes and speckled, patchy ones.
• Cook on one side only. Dadar gulung crêpes are cooked until the top surface is just set and dry, then lifted out. Flipping them browns the second side and spoils the even green, and they do not need it.
• Keep the pan at moderate heat. Too hot and the pandan green turns brown at the edges almost immediately. A moderate pan and a thin layer of batter keeps the colour clean.
• Cook the filling until it clumps. It should pull together and come away from the pan, not sit wet. A loose filling soaks into the crêpe and the roll splits. But stop as soon as it clumps — pushed further it turns dry and sandy.
• Cool both components before rolling. Warm filling in a warm crêpe steams and tears it. Let the crêpes cool in a stack under a cloth and the filling cool to room temperature, then assemble.

vi. Variations

Kuih ketayap is the Malaysian name for essentially the same thing. Some versions colour the crêpe with butterfly pea flower for blue instead of pandan green, or leave it plain. The filling can be scented with a pandan leaf simmered in with the coconut, or with a little jackfruit or durian in fruit-season versions. Dadar gulung isi kacang uses a mung bean filling instead of coconut. A modern café version fills the crêpe with sweetened cream cheese alongside the coconut, which is not traditional but is now common in Jakarta.

vii. Serving & storage

Dadar gulung is snack food, eaten with the hands at room temperature, usually two or three to a portion, and traditionally sold at markets in the morning. It is not plated or garnished; the roll is the whole presentation. Hot tea or kopi tubruk is the natural accompaniment, and the bitterness of either does useful work against the palm sugar.

It is at its best on the day it is made and should be kept at room temperature in a covered container rather than refrigerated — the cold makes the crêpe rubbery and the coconut filling firm and waxy. Made in the morning, it will be fine into the evening. If you must keep it longer, refrigerate for up to two days and bring it back to room temperature, or steam it briefly to soften the crêpe again. It does not freeze well.

ix. More from Indonesian & Malaysian

• Serabi — clay-pan coconut pancakes
• Klepon — pandan palm-sugar balls
• Onde-Onde — sesame-coated mung-bean dumplings
• Kue Cubit — small pinch-cakes
• Dodol — slow-cooked palm-sugar candy
• Cendol — pandan worms in iced coconut milk