Ragi cake
Preparation Time
20 minutes
Cooking Time
35 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Dessert
Serves 8
Key Ingredients
- Ragi (finger millet) flour
About This Recipe
Cake made from millet flour is a home baker's trick in India, and ragi is the flour most often tried, because it bakes into a deep brown, pleasantly earthy cake. This version is an eggless tea cake sweetened with jaggery, moistened with ghee and curd, and baked in a single 7-inch tin.
Ragi has no gluten, so the cake needs help to rise and to stay soft. The curd reacts with the baking soda to give the batter its lift, the baking powder backs it up, and the ghee and jaggery do the moistening; jaggery in particular keeps a cake soft long after it has cooled. Because the flour is heavy, fold it in by hand and stop the moment it is mixed; beating builds no structure in a gluten-free batter, only a tough crumb.
Jaggery powder dissolves into the batter cleanly, where jaggery cubes leave sweet lumps in the baked crumb, so weigh 100 g rather than guessing. For a lighter cake, replace a quarter of the ragi flour with whole wheat flour; for a stronger jaggery taste, use 120 g. Swap the ghee for the same amount of soft butter if you prefer. The same flour, baked drier and crisper, makes the ragi cookies.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Cake
- Ragi (finger millet) flour — 1 cup
- Jaggery powder — 100 g
- Ghee, at room temperature — 4 tbsp
- Curd, whisked — 1/2 cup
- Milk — 1/4 cup
- Baking Powder — 1 tsp
- Baking Soda — 1/4 tsp
For the tin
- Groundnut oil — 1 tsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve the cake at room temperature with tea or filter coffee; a warm slice with a glass of milk is a filling after-school snack. It travels well, so it suits lunchboxes and picnics, and it keeps for two days in an airtight tin on the counter. More ragi baking is in the ragi recipes roundup.
Tips for Cooking Ragi cake
Bring the curd, milk and ghee to room temperature before you start, or the cold curd seizes the ghee into lumps. Measure the jaggery on a scale; powder compresses in a spoon, so volume measures mislead. Bake until a skewer comes out clean; crumbs on the skewer mean another five minutes in the oven.
Chef’s Note
The crumb of a ragi cake is closer and denser than a maida sponge; that is the flour's character, not a fault, and the jaggery keeps it moist where a plain sugar cake dries out sooner. A slice, one eighth of the cake, comes to about 165 kcal, with 1.3 g of protein and 1.7 g of fibre, and most of the fat comes from the ghee.
Per serving (approx.): 165 kcal, protein 1.3 g, carbs 21 g, fat 8.4 g, fibre 1.7 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Sep 29, 2026
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