A very Happy Diwali to all you lovely readers. Festive season is around and everyone is so full of life once again. This is the time of the year, which everyone celebrates with joy and gaiety. A time to shop around, give and receive gifts, indulge in lots of sweets. A time when the whole country is lit up with diyas, candles and fancy lighting. There is only happiness, wherever you see.
And with so much of delicious food all around, inspiration to bake something for festival season grows stronger. And with that grows the To-Bake list. Barks, Cookies, Cupcakes and what not. But for Diwali, I wanted to bake something traditional, apart from chocolate, and also something which is not high on sugar.
Last Saturday afternoon, after having lunch I was lazily browsing through the channels, when I saw these cookies on Rachel Allen’s Bake. And they caught my attention instantly. They reminded me of the childhood days when we used to buy Nan Khatai from a street hawker, who used to come and yell selling his cookies. There is a special feeling attached to them. A mere sight of them on screen, and I was ready to bake them off! Everything else was on back burner.
A mix of very simple ingredients, which I am sure all Indian kitchens have in their pantry. And the recipe is quite easy to whip up, that you don’t need to be scared of baking them. I added a bit of green cardamom powder to enhance their aroma to match up to the festive season, which you may skip if you like them plain. And trust me, they’ll come out so perfectly done, that your friends and family will be highly impressed.
Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/2 cup semolina flour
1 cup ghee or clarified butter, melted
3/4 cup sugar, powdered
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp green cardamom powder {optional}
toasted almonds, to garnish
Instructions
- Whip sugar and ghee together in a bowl using a wooden spoon.
- Add rest of the ingredients, except almonds in the creamed sugar and ghee and mix well to form a dough.
- Let rest the dough for an hour.
- Taking one tablespoon of dough, roll it into a ball. Place all the dough ball on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- Press each ball gently with your thumb and tuck in the toasted almonds.
- Bake them for about 15 minutes on a 180 degrees preheated oven.
- Let them cool completely and enjoy them with your friends and family.