Puttu or steamed rice cake is a typically dish of Kerala. This is a typically breakfast preparation, served on banana leaf , along with vegetarian or non-vegetarian curry.  It is one of the easiest and nutritious breakfast preparations. 

Though puttu is known to be integral part of kerela cuisine, many believe that it was an English man who gave the nae puttu. It is said that as rice powder and scrapped coconut at put together in alternate pattern. The English man named it ‘puttu’. It was also one of the favorite dish of British.   

Puttu is the general term for a variety of steamed rice and coconut dishes, both savory and sweet, from Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the hill district of Karnataka.  Puttu is often served along with gravies, like fish curry, chicken curry or kadala(chickpea) curry, and papadum. 

Also plantain, jack fruit, mango or banana is commonly served with it. In southern kerala people eat puttu accompanied by sweet black coffee. In Tamil Nadu it is served with grated coconut with jaggery made of palm or sugar cane, or with sweetened coconut milk. In Sri Lanka, pittu is usually accompanied with tripe curry, fish or a meat curry, coconut milk and a sambol.

In the ancient times, it was traditionally steamed in bamboo tubes with pierced disc at the bottom, fixed tightly over a wide mouthed pot in which water was boiled. 

For the sweet version the ingredients were tied in a thin and wet muslin cloth and placed over the vessel with boiling water. 

In Tamil Nadu the sweet version made with jaggery as part of food offering during the nine day Navaratri festival. Sweet puttu was also made when a girl child attained puberty and the coconut palm blossomed for the first time. 

There is an interesting folklore mentioned in Thiruvilayadal purana. There was once an old woman who used to sell puttu near the Madurai Meenakshi temple. She was a great devotee of Meenakshi.  Every day the lady would struggle to make puttu and bring to the temple premises and sell. Seeing her devotion Ganesha decided to help her. He approached the old woman and offered her help in disguise of small boy. Seeing the boy the poor woman told him that she had nothing to offer him in return. The boy said don’t worry you can give  me broken puttu in return, hearing this she happily agreed. Ganesha in guise of small boy would help her sell and make puttu. Since that day it is believed that Ganesha loves the sweet Tamil puttu. There are many temples where he is offered puttu. 

Some variations of puttu use other grains such as wheat flour, tapioca and corn flour. The layered filling of coconut can be replaced by other foods, such as egg curry or banana. Puttu prepared in a ball shape are called manipputtu. Puttu can also be made using bamboo rice

In the Malaysian cuisines we find some variation for puttu , putu bambu is a Malaysian  version of the sweet tamil puttu. The are versions were palm sugar or fenugreek seeds are added to the rice flour mixture and then steamed in bamboo pipes. Similarly we find such versions in Indonesian, sri Lankan cuisines

In the Philippines puto is the most popular kakanin (umbrella term for sweets made of glutinous rice and coconut milk),  a steamed rice cake traditionally white in color, although it can also be tinged green or purple when flavored with pandan or ube. Nearly every town has its own unique variety of Puto.