Last Updated on December 14, 2020 by Chef Mireille
These Savboro – Sri Lankan Sago Coconut Cookies are super crispy cookies, perfect for dunking in your tea/coffee or milk. Made from sago, coconut and bread crumbs, this unusual combination of ingredients yield a super delicious cookie.
Sago is one of the main ingredients in these cookies. Here in the west, sago is non existent in our diet. It’s cousin, tapioca, we generally only eat as tapioca pudding, a dessert. However, sago is used as a grain in South Asian cuisines and our used in everything from appetizer and side dishes to desserts. So what is the difference between tapioca and sago? Many use them both interchangeably. I too was guilty of this in the past, but they are not the same. Sago is extracted from the pith of various tropical palms, but tapioca is extracted from cassava root, also known as yuca or manioc.
To find sago here in the US, you will need to go to an Indian or Asian market. Be careful not to pick tapioca, which are much larger pearls, although instant tapioca pearls will be of almost similar size to sago.
Are you ready to experiment with sago? Try my other sago recipes!
Sago Recipes
- Sago Vada – Maharashtrian Fritters
- Ube Sago Kheer – a Filipino Indian fusion kheer
These cookies are made with an unusual combination of ingredients and can be flavored with any combination of vanilla, fennel, cumin or mixed spice. You can find mixed spice bags in Sri Lankan markets (cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, cardamom).
Sri Lankan is a very flavorful cuisine – a fusion of both Indian and Southeast Asian cuisines. I find it very similar to Indonesian cuisine, which is something close to my heart with part of my family being Indonesian.
I hope you enjoy these unique cookies as much as I did.
Before we get to the Savboro recipe, do check out some of my other Sri Lankan recipes!
Sri Lankan Recipes
- Turmeric Rice
- Sri Lankan Shrimp Curry
- Kiri Bath – breakfast rice cake
- Luna Miris – Chile Sambol
IN THE MAKING
These cookies are VERY CRISPY. Perfect with a cup of tea or milk.
Savboro – Sri Lankan Sago Coconut Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup sago
- 1 cup frozen coconut defrosted (or freshly grated coconut)
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup bread crumbs
- 1 teaspoon fennel seed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Line a cookie sheet with a baking sheet or parchment paper.
- Combine all ingredients and mix with your hands until mixture sticks together, adding 1-2 tablespoons of water if necessary. Depending on the moisture in the coconut will determine if you need the additional water.
- Place a cookie/biscuit cutter on the baking sheet. Add a few tablespoons of the batter and using the back of a spoon, press down until tight and compact. Carefully remove the cookie/biscuit cutter.
- Repeat until all of the batter has been used.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden, rotating tray half way through cooking.
- Note: When you remove from oven, they will appear to be soft. As they cool, they become very crispy.
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Very interesting cookie Mir, and nice reading about the ingredients!..though we have been using sago ever since, never really bothered to read about it!
yes it was interesting to find out the difference between the sago and tapioca
Unusual combo of ingredients! In fact I have never seen a cookie recipe with sago!Nice to read about tapioca and sago.Bookmarking this recipe to try later,Mir.
yes I had to keep on researching making sure I saw it right – but cookies with unsoaked sago are so unique
it definitely has a unique texture and a hard bite so have it with a cup of tea or milk
Should sago be used as raw
yes – these cookies are quite crunchy with the raw sago but they are still so good when dunked in a cup of tea or milk.
Wow totally a new cookie for the sure, just amazed to see how catchy and fantastic these cookies looks.
thank and they taste just as good as they look 🙂
Those cookies look so good and like the fact that it is baked. Most of the sago snacks in India are deep fried. Bookmarking the recipe.
yes – it definitely makes them super crispy and crunchy
Those cookies look fantastic.
thank they are and perfect for dunking!
I used to think that sago and tapioca pearls are the same, too, and I’d keep wondering how it is that bubble tea sellers have access to such huge tapioca pearls. I know better now 🙂 The cookies are highly unusual, as in, they use a combination of ingredients that you wouldn’t expect in a cookie, but the final product looks delicious. By the way, is the prep time really 15 hours or is that a typo?
That was supposed to be 15 minutes will update thanks
Those cookies sure have some very interesting combination of ingredients. Lovely Sri Lankan recipe.
thanks yes they are so unique but you definitely need something to dunk them into
Add me to the guilty list of not knowing that sago and tapioca pearls are different. What a great recipe this is. I am a failure at cooking sago dishes. I can never make them the right consistency. This recipe should be right up my alley and hopefully I won’t mess up.
I only learned the differene when doing the research for this post so no guilty feelings at all!!!
Thats a unique recipe Mir and I appreciate and love how much you research before posting. Wealth of information on everything. I love the pictures.
thanks – yes I too thought this recipe was so out of the ordinary
Baked these today, I found them too hard, especially the sago. Didn’t taste too bad would be better if a little salt is added, more fennel, replace the vanilla with cardomom.
they are hard, but that is how they are traditionally made. Dip them in a cup of tea and it’s great!
Can we make this cookies without cookie or biscuit cutter?
You need something to shape it – so you can also use a glass if you dont have biscuit cutter