Nankhatai Eggless Easy Cookies Recipe

Ingredients needed

All purpose flour/maida - 200 grams (1 cup) sieved
Fine Rava/semolina - 50 grams (1/4 cup)
Gram flour (kadalai mavu) - 50 grams (1/4 cup) sieved
Cardamom powder - 5-6 pods powdered
Baking powder - 1 tsp

White sugar - 170 grams (3/4 cup)
Ghee/ clarified butter - 200 grams (1 cup)

For Decoration

Pistachio - 10 - 12

Preparation

Before baking, it is always necessary to pre-heat the oven. Pre-heat the oven at 180 degree C for 10 minutes.

Grease a baking tray with ghee or line it with parchment paper.

Powder the sugar finely and keep it aside.

Sliver pistachio and keep it aside.

If you cannot get fine semolina, grind the regular semolina/ rava just for a second in the blender.

Method

In a bowl, mix together ghee and powdered sugar. Ghee should be semi solid. (I used readymade 200 ml packet ghee).

Beat ghee and sugar together until it becomes light and smooth. (I mixed it vigorously with the ladle for 5-6 minutes).

In another bowl, mix together maida, gram flour, semolina, cardamom powder and baking powder.

Mix well.

Add the flour to the ghee + sugar mixture and mix until combined to form a smooth dough. Don't over knead the dough.

Make small gooseberry sized smooth balls without cracks from the mixture. Press the ball slightly to flatten it.

Arrange it on the greased baking tray leaving enough space between the cookies as nankhatai tend to expand while baking.

Gently place a slivered pistashio in the center of each cookie.

Keep the baking tray with the unbaked cookies in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. This is done to retain the shape of the cookies.

Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degree C for 12 -15 minutes or until the bottom starts browning.

Remove the tray from the oven and transfer the cookies on a wire rack to cool completely.

Once taken out from the oven, the cookies will be very soft but will harden as it cools.