Nankhatai

Friday, June 3, 2011

A soft, eggless biscuit made with flour, cardamom, ghee and sugar. Each bite of the warm biscuit will just melt in our mouth.


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I remember school days, back from school we would climb up the stairs smelling the aroma of warm ghee and cardamom and I would immediately know that it's Nankhatai. My grandmother would bake them just before we arrived from school and we would try to grab it even before it cooled! Each bite of the warm biscuit would just melt in our mouth.



My grandmother was a great cook; her passion for cooking introduced us to many delicious dishes. She is no longer with us but her love and the taste of her delectable food will always stay with us. Love you, Nama!


Nankhatai


I took this recipe from my mom, who got it from my grandmother back then. She did not give me accurate measurements for the ingredients. I tried out couple of variations and now they taste like my Nama’s :-)


Nankhatai is an eggless, soft biscuit made with Maida, Cardamom, Ghee and Sugar. This recipe calls for just a few ingredients and simple procedure. The key ingredient for the taste is ghee


All you need to make these soft yummy biscuits are:


Nankhatai


All Purpose flour/Maida- 1 Cup
Ghee- 1 Cup
Cardamom powder- 1 Tbsp
Powdered Sugar- 1 Cup
Baking soda- 1/3 Tsp

Mix maida, sugar and cardamom powder in a bowl.

I blend 8-9 cardamom seeds with pod removed along with sugar to make cardamon sugar.

Add baking soda to the maida mixture and mix well.

Baking soda is used to give rise (bulged look) to the biscuit when it is baking. Make sure to use fresh baking soda or else the biscuits will not rise.

Now, add ghee to the maida mixture and knead it into dough. Do not add water! You can add more ghee if you need. Cover the dough and keep it aside for 4-5 hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 320 F. Grease a baking sheet and keep it ready.

Divide the dough into small round balls, flatten them in between your palms and arrange them on the baking sheet.

Place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 12- 15 minutes or until the biscuits have slightly browned.

I would recommend keeping a watch on the biscuits after 10 minutes to make sure you don’t burn them.

When done remove from the oven and set aside to cool.

If the aroma has already made your tongue drooling, hold on the biscuits can be very hot.

4 comments:

Aarthi and Suresh said...

Looks and sounds awesome Pavithra!!! Would definitely wanna try.
I also notice that you use conventional oven in a lot of your cooking and that interests me. I have never used the oven much except for baking cakes. But, now, I feel like I should be trying out recipes with it. Pls post more of oven-used recipes :).

TheYummyMorsel said...

@ arths
Thanks a lot.Conventional oven is one of my favorite cooking buddy :-)!! Its a great way to cook food. I will post different kinds of recipes and oven-used recipes will definitely be among them.

Sarah said...

They look gorgeous! In fact these were one of the first things I learnt to bake.

Arundhuti said...

These look lovely!

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