Nankhatai

The Indian Cookie ......

The sweet aroma of cardamoms and sugar filled the air. I was baking cookies for the first time .... and I could not hold my excitement. I opened the oven and screamed ... 'J come over .... just check out my cookies'. While they were still hot and soft, I handed over one of them to him and looked at his face with anticipation.He finished this one and wanted one more .... I got my answer !!

I let the cookies cool down and stored them in a cookie jar. I noticed J scurrying to the kitchen more often ... only till I discovered a clean cookie jar sitting on the self.He had finished it all in a day !

Preparation Time - 30 minutes

Ingredients

All purpose flour - 1 cup

Semolina - 2/3 cup

Gram Flour - 1 cup

Cardamom - 5

Powdered Sugar - 2/3 cup

Salt - 1 pinch

Butter - 1 stick

Baking Powder - 1/2 tsp

Milk for kneading

Method of Preparation

1 Combine semolina, gram flour, all purpose flour and baking powder. Mix well and keep aside.

2 Keep butter in room temperature to make it soft.

3 Crush the cardamom and mix with the flour mixture(semolina + All purpose flour + Gram Flour)

4 Once the butter is soft add powdered sugar to it and mix well to form a thick butter sugar mixture.

5 Slowly add the Flour mixture to this butter and sugar. Knead it to make a dough (like atta). If required add little milk to make a soft dough.

6 Pinch out small balls from the dough and flatten it a bit. You can stick a dry fruit to it if you wish.

7 Grease a cookie sheet with some oil or butter. Place the cookies on it. Make sure there is at least an inch gap between the cookies as they expand while baking.

8 Pre heat oven to 350 degrees F . Place the cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

9 Remove cookie sheet and allow it to cool down. Remove cookies from the sheet and store in an air tight container.

Notes

Make sure the dough is soft.

Do not heat the butter to make it soft. Allow it to be in room temperature and mix sugar only when it softens.

Ensure that there is space between the cookie while baking else they will stick to each other.

Do not flatten the cookie much. They expand and flatten by self when baking.

Variation

You may try using oil instead of butter.

Use sugar as per taste.(less or more).

Other Names

Cookies, Gram Flour - Besan,All purpose flour - Maida, Semolina - Suji,Cardamom - Elaichi