With the first wintry gusts and the gloom of winter approaching, what more heartening than something nice and hot to eat? This is exactly what Ragani Mooken has to offer: her poutou (rice-based cakes), cooked on the spot, simply melt on your tongue and are really comforting on a blustery wintry afternoon.

Every morning Ragani gets up around five to prepare the powdered mixture for the rice cakes. ?I need to prepare it - the crushed rice, sugar, coconut and vanilla one day early,? she explains. She learnt how to make poutou from her mother in law, who has 50 years of experience in this field.

The daughter in law thus learnt to cook poutou the traditional way, using a kola. This old-fashioned machine is used to steam the rice cakes. Above the gas burner, a round tin, onto which two cylinders full of the mixture are fitted, is full of boiling water.

Ragani expertly fills one of the cylinders with the powdery mixture. As she fits the tube back onto the kola, she says: ?It takes about 10 minutes for one batch to cook.? When it is cooked, she slides it out of the cylinder and quickly slices the tube of solid rice with a nylon thread. Careful to respect rules of hygiene, she always wears gloves. She then sprinkles some dessicated coconut onto the cakes and sets them out on a tray, ready for customers. She sells 4 poutou for Rs 5, and very quickly the batch that we saw her making is gone. She cooks new batches all day long and can sell up to 150 cakes per day.

Ragani has been selling poutou for the last five years, at the stall near Notre Dame de Lourdes Church in Rose-Hill. Her children sometimes help her and she thinks her son could take over after her since he knows how to make the cakes. Although she admits that she sells more poutou during winter, she has some faithful clients, who come every day, to buy their stock of warm cakes.