Inspired by a recipe on Rak's blog http://www.rakskitchen.net/2014/10/nan-khatai-recipe-nankhatai-recipe.html I wanted to bake the Indian local bakery biscuits. My mom buys the salt biscuits from our market when I visit her and makes sure I carry few packs when I leave. It is the perfect combo for tea, coffee or milk. My kids love dunking it in milk. They have this perfect crisp not too crunchy or soft or chewy at all, the ideal beige biscuit color, heavenly aroma of baked goodness. They are sold in large glass jars or in heaps on an aluminum tray at the shop. Our local bakers make these lovely flavors using spices, nuts and flours - like wheat, ragi, almonds, cashews, elaichi, jam, salt, diabetic version and likewise. What I love is the simplicity of ingredients - butter, sugar and flour that is all. Only 3 ingredients, well technically 5 can result in something as good as this. This is a bare bones recipe, you can decorate it or change it several ways. Personally, I want to drop down the sugar level, add a little salt and see how that goes. Remember, your outcome only tastes as good as what goes into it. Use good quality flour and ghee to see the difference.
Sugar - 1/2 cup
Elaichi/Cardamom - 3 pods (or lesser, or just omit if you do not like it)
Flour - 1 1/2 cups (I used Atta actually, not a fan of the bleached flour)
Baking powder - about 3 pinches
Ghee - 1/2 cup (or use soft butter)
Powder sugar and elaichi in the bender to a smooth powder. Measure the flour and baking powder into a bowl, add powdered sugar. Now add ghee/butter little by little and mix like you would for making chapattis. No water or milk. Use just the butter or fat to roll the flour into a ball. Adjust the texture by sprinkling more flour if needed. It should be thicker than what you would make for chapattis but roll into shapes for baking, without sticking on the hands or being dry.
Cut or roll into preferred shapes and bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.
One note is that, I baked the round bottom ones on a glass dish and square ones on a metal dish/tray. I strongly recommend the baking on metal- gives a nice brown on the bottom that I loved. It also tasted better, did not crack on the sides. The ones baked on glass had cooked alright, but looked plain and boring. These proportions yielded about 20 cookies. Well, depends how big you cut them into.
