Make the home made rice flour and have it ready. I sieved the flour once, but if you have ground it fine, there is no need to sieve it. Have the flour ready in a wide bowl. Also add the cardamom powder to the flour and mix it well.
Making the jaggery syrup is one another very important step in this recipe. The jaggery syrup should be in a perfect soft ball stage. If it reaches over or under, the athirasam could end up being too hard or could disintegrate in the oil.
Heat the jaggery with about ½ cup of water. Heat it on medium heat to dissolve the jaggery. When it dissolves, filter it to remove any impurities. Now heat the syrup on medium flame and let it come to a vigorous boil. Let it thicken until it reaches the soft ball stage. To test, have a small cup with cold water ready. When the syrup thickens, add a drop of it into the cold water. The syrup should remain intact in the water without disintegrating. Remove this chunk of syrup with your fingers and at this time it should form a soft ball. If this happens, we have the right consistency. Remove it from flame right away.
Now add this syrup carefully to the rice flour. Do not add all the syrup at once. Keep adding little by little and stir the flour with a wooden ladle. Once the rice flour absorbs all the syrups and comes to a dough consistency, stop adding the syrup. Make sure the dough is a little bit on the looser side as it will become hard after some time. Once the mixture cools down a bit, gather everything together and make soft dough. Rest this dough at least for a day to have better flavors. The dough can be left outside for a day or two or refrigerated if kept longer than that. If refrigerating, make sure you bring the dough back to room temperature before making Adhirasam.
On the day of making Adhirasam, divide the dough into equal size balls. Heat oil on medium flame to fry the Adhirasam.
I used two zip lock bags to flatten my dough. Grease two zip lock bags lightly with sesame oil. Place a ball of dough on one zip lock and place the other zip lock on top of the dough. Using a flat bottom bowl, press once over the ball of dough, to flatten it. Make sure you do not flatten it too thin as it will make the Adhirasam very hard. Keep the dough on the thicker side.
Now carefully drop this into hot oil and fry on low to medium until golden brown and crisp. Drain it using a perforated ladle and then press over the Adhirasam to remove the extra oil using another ladle. This step is very important as the Adhirasam tends to soak up quite a bit of oil. Fry one at a time and remove them all on a paper towel lined bowl.
Repeat the process with the rest of the dough and make sure you always have the heat in low-medium when frying.
Let the Adhirasam cool down to room temperature before storing them. It can remain outside for about a week.