Jeera cookies
August 4, 2009 at 9:35 am | In cookies | 14 CommentsTags: ajwain, jeera, salt, sugar
One of the most extensively used spice in our kitchen is the humble jeera.We add it to sundry vegetables, dals and powder it to sprinkle it over our dahi.
Ingredients:
- 120 gms maida/APF
- 85 gms butter
- 20 gms sugar
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp jeera(cumin seeds)
- 1/2 tsp ajwain(carom seeds)
Method:
- Preheat oven at 180 deg.C
- Beat butter,sugar and salt till light and fluffy.
- Sieve flour. Add jeera and ajwain to it.
- Add flour to the butter mixture and mix gently to get a soft dough. Using your hands works best for this.
- Form dough into small balls. Flatten the top of each ball with a fork. Sprikle a few seeds of jeera on top and press them very gently into the dough.
- Line a baking tray with greased butter paper/aluminium foil. Place biscuits and bake for 15-20 mins.
Source: Nita Mehta’s Bakes and cakes.
Notes: I particularly like the combination of sweet and salty in this cookie. I found the proportion of the two to be just right. If you want to make a salty jeera cookie, you can simply delete the sugar from the recipe. You can do the same with ajwain if you dont like it. Though the recipe suggests sprinkling a little cumin on top of the cookies before popping them in the oven,my habit of skip reading made me miss that line. I realised that only after the cookies were baked. Cumin for decoration would have added that extra touch. But thats not to say the cookies tasted any worse just coz they dint have cumin sprinkled over! Actually, if you look carefully, you will be able to notice one or two cumin seeds sitting on top of the cookies. :p The dough is slightly on the hard side, so its not very easy to roll it. It works best to bake small balls of the dough(like you make for rotis) and flatten them between your palms.
Thumbprint cookies
June 29, 2009 at 10:31 am | In cookies | 8 CommentsTags: cashew, jam, shortbread
Once again I used the cuban short bread cookies as a reference point for these cookies.
Ingredient:
- 75 gms APF
- 35-40 gms butter
- A pinch of salt
- ¼ tsp baking powder
- 15 gms sugar
- A little egg to bind (about ¼ egg)
- Jam to top
- 8-10 cashew nuts coarsely ground
Method:
- Sift together flour, salt and b.p. Keep aside.
- Rub in the butter using your finger such they the flour resembles bread crumbs. Adding egg bind the dough together.
- Make six to seven portions of the dough. Shape each of them into even round. Using your thumb press the centre of the dough ball. The depression created wil be filled with jam post baking.
- Prepare all the six/seven pieces this way. Baste the sides and top of each cookie with egg white and lightly roll them in the crushed cashew such that the cashew evenly coveres the cookies.
- Bake at 180 deg C for about 10 mins.
- Remove from oven. Let cool and pipe in jam of your choice.
Notes: I got 8 small cookies out of this recipe. I wanted to try it in small quantities, so it worked out fine for me, but you may want to double up the recipe to meet your family’s needs. I struggled a bit in shaping these cookies. No matter what I did the depression in the centre wasnt deep enough!! I have realised that it works best to do the basic shaping of the cookie with your hands and then to place in on a flat surface and then create teh depression. If you try making the depression while holding the cookie in your hand, you get no depression at all!! You could use any nuts besides cashews- almonds, pistachios,walnuts. The choice of jam is also open to you. I had strawberry (with strawberry chunks) and mango jam at home. Kissan has come up with these cool squeeze tubes for jams. If you have one of those at home, use it to pipe in the jam. Its much easier and neater than spooning in the jam. If you want to store these cookies for a while, it might be a good idea to store them without the jam. Jam tends to make the cookies soft over time, so it makes sense to store them in air tight containers without the filling.Add the filling a little before serving. I liked these cookies because they have the right amount of sweetness and crunchiness.
Cashew cookies
June 8, 2009 at 11:28 am | In cookies | 11 CommentsMost people,barring me, like dry fruits so this is a cookie that should appeal to the aam junta(as you can see the election fever will take sometime fade away!)
Ingredients:
- 100 gms maida
- 75 gms softened butter
- 50 gms powdered sugar
- 2 drops almond essence/1 tsp vanilla essence
- 2-3 tbsp finely chopped cashewnuts
Method:
- Sieve maida.
- Preheat oven at 200 deg C.
- Beat butter and sugar till light and creamy. Add essence and beat again.
- Add flour and mix gently to get a soft dough.
- Form into small balls, flatten lightly and roll in the chopped cashews.
- Arrange in a greased baking tray and bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove from tray when cool.
Notes: There is nothing wrong with these cookies except one thing- the cashew pieces tend to fall off once the cookies are baked. Obviously just pressing them onto the cookies before baking isnt good enough. I think to remedy the situation we could baste the cookies with lightly beaten egg white and then roll them in the cashew piece. I think that would make them stick better. I am not sure how effective would using milk as a substitute of egg white be since I normally use egg in recipes I am not sure about how effective its substitutes are.
This by the way, is the tenth cookie on this blog. Not bad I think!!:D
Orange cookies
May 8, 2009 at 11:22 am | In cookies | 9 CommentsTags: orange, short bread, zest
A variation to the basic shortbread- zesty and orangey!
Ingredients:
- Maida 60 gms
- Butter 30 gms
- Orange essence a few drops
- Fresh orange zest 1½-2 tbsp
- Baking powder ½ tsp
- Milk to bind
Method:
- Mix together the maida and the baking powder.
- Rub in the butter till the flour begins resembling bread crumbs.
- Add the orange zest and essence and mix well.
- Use milk to bind together.
- Use the dought to form any shape you like and place the cookies on a well greased over tray and bake for 10-15 min.s at 180 deg.C.
- Makes 10 small cookies.
Mandira’s notes: I relaly dont have anything much to write about this cookie, just that the short bread lends itself to millions of varaitions!All you need is a fertile imagination!
Cheese sticks
May 6, 2009 at 9:40 am | In cookies | 6 CommentsTags: cheese, easy
This is what I call “cheesy and easy”!! It takes just about 5 minutes to put it all together!
Ingredient:
- Maida-60 gms
- Baking powder-1/3 tsp (optional)
- Salt -to taste
- Pepper -to taste
- Butter- 30 gms
- Grated processed cheese-30 gms
- Egg yolk-1/2 + a little for basting
- Water-just enough to bind.
Method:
- Pre heat over.
- Sift flour, salt, pepper and baking powder together.
- Add the butter and gently rub it in till it begins to look like fine bread crumbs.
- Stir in the cheese and bind together with egg yolk and water to form a thick dough.
- Roll out the dough and cut into strips.
- Bake the strips on a well greased tray at 160 deg.C for 7-10 mins.
Source: Basic Food Preparation
Mandira’s notes: The egg yolk in this recipe is totally avoidable. In fact the yolk lends an eggey smell to the cheese sticks. Though the baking powder is mentioned as optional, I think it should be added because it makes the biscuits light. Towards the end of the baking time, it makes sense to repeatedly check on the biscuits ,else you run the risk of making them too brown. Please refer to picture below to know what over done biscuits look like! If you like, you could reduce the cheese quantity a bit- I love cheese, so I would never do that, but if you like it less cheesy, knock of 5-10 gms of cheese.
Black currant-choco chip cookies
April 29, 2009 at 9:40 am | In cookies | 8 CommentsTags: black currant, chocolate chips, easy
Another shortbread cookie. A twist on the original cuban shortbread cookies with black currants and chocolate chips thrown in.
Ingredients:
- Maida 60 gms
- Butter 30 gms
- Sugar 15 gms
- Vanilla essence a few drops
- Black currant 1- 1½ tbsp
- Choco chips 1-1 ½ tbsp
- Baking powder ½ tsp
- Milk to bind
Method:
- Mix together the maida and the baking powder.
- Rub in the butter till the flour begins resembling bread crumbs.
- Add the black currant,choco chips and essence and mix well.
- Use milk to bind together.
- Use the dought to form any shape you like and place the cookies on a well greased over tray and bake for 10-15 min.s at 180 deg.C.
Source: With the cuban cookies turning out as well as they did, I used the basic dough with a variety of additions to get new cookie.
Mandira’s notes: I like shortbreads. They are very easy to put together and taste good. Once we know how to make the basic shortbread, you can alter the flavouring and add as many variations as you like. I used black currant and chocolate chips because I had them at home. There is no hard and fast rule about the proportion of both these ingredients. You can also increase or decrease the quantity of each but please make sure you dont increase their quantity so much that it becomes difficult to roll and cut the cookies.
Chocolate Almond Cookies
April 19, 2009 at 9:15 am | In cookies | 6 CommentsTags: almonds, chocolate, cookies
All you need to bake hundreds of different kinds of cookies is one basic recipe that works for you. I added dark chocolate and almonds to the standard shortbread recipe. These cookies have a melt in mouth crunchy texture as opposed to the usually chewy texture of most chocolate cookies.
Ingredients
- Dark Chocolate (atleast 70% cocoa) – 125 gms
- Butter – 1/2 cup
- Sugar – 1/2 cup
- Maida – 1 1/4 cups
- Almonds – 1/4 cup
Method
- Chop the dark chocolate into chunks. Melt the dark chocolate along with the butter on high for 1 minute in the microwave. Whisk well until the chocolate butter mix is silky and smooth.
- Powder the sugar. Add powdered sugar to the melted chocolate and combine well. Add almonds.
- Add maida gradually and mix well to form a dough.
- Knead the dough until its soft for about 7-10 minutes. If dough feels too wet, add a tablespoon or so of maida. If the dough feels too dry, add a tablespoon or so of butter.
- Grease a baking tray. Form the dough into circular cookies and transfer to the tray.
- Chill the cookies for an hour or more.
- Preheat oven to 220 C.
- Bake cookies at 220 C for 12-15 minutes.
Lakshmi’s Notes: Please use only dark chocolate with at least 70% cocoa. Anything with lesser cocoa content will not work. I generally chill the cookies at least a couple of hours or overnight before baking. This ensures that the texture is perfect without being too crumbly or dense. Do not use glass to bake these cookies. You can substitute a couple of tablespoons of maida with cocoa powder if you want the cookies to be darker.
Cuban shortbread cookies
April 9, 2009 at 12:20 pm | In cookies | 11 CommentsTags: easy, marmalade, shortbread, zest
Mandira: I stumbled over this recipe on Baking Bites and it tried it out. Since it was a success, I am sharing it with all of you here. I tweaked the recipe a bit.
Lakshmi: This recipe is similar to the short bread recipe we use in our family – minus the egg. The guava paste called for in the original recipe at Baking Bites went fabulously with the shortbread.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups all purpose flour (if you’re skipping the 1 egg used in this recipe use 2 3/4 cups of flour)
- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup butter, softened
- 2/3 cup sugar
- 1 tbsp orange zest
- 1 large egg
- 1 tbsp orange juice
- Guava Paste/Jam
Method:
- Preheat oven to 350F. Grease or Line a baking tray.
- Whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
- Cream together butter and sugar until light. Beat in orange zest and egg followed by the orange juice.
- Gradually beat in the flour mixture, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you work, until dough comes together.
- Divide dough into three portions and work with each one individually.
- Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out to be 1/3 inch thick. Add more sprinkles of flour as you work to keep the dough from sticking. Use a lightly floured 2-inch round cutter to cut out circles of dough. Place on prepared baking sheet.
- Top each cookie with a piece of guava paste.
- Repeat with remaining cookie dough. Bake for 13-16 minutes until cookies are golden at the edges.
- Cool on baking tray for 4-5 minutes and then transfer to a wire rack to cool.
Source: Original recipe here.
Lakshmi’s Notes: Baking times will vary with oven, mine took just 11 minutes for cookies to turn golden at 220 C. I skipped the salt completely. I skipped the egg and to compensate reduced the flour by 1/4 cup. I generally rest by dough overnight before baking, so I shaped the cookies and rested them overnight before baking.
Mandira’s notes: I skipped the rum that the original recipe asked for and I dint dust the cookies with sugar before serving. We are not much of a jam family. We have had a bottle of marmalade lying in the fridge for ages. Some of it got used in these cookies. Mixed fruit jam or any other jam would work just as well. A brighter colour jam(like mixed fruit) may even make the cookies look more attractive than the dull orange marmalade. I used Amul butter and skipped the addition of salt. I love the smell of fresh zest. I didnt have oranges at home but I did have sweet limes(mausambis). I used the zest of the sweet lime and to me it tasted just as good as orange zest.
Almond Biscotti
March 29, 2009 at 9:28 am | In cookies | 4 CommentsTags: almond, biscotti, orange
Biscotti is Italian for biscuit. Like rusk, that we Indians are more familiar with, these are baked twice. Here’s a recipe for the same.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup + 1 tbsp All Purpose Flour
- 1/2 cup Sugar (powdered)
- 3 1/2 tbsp Butter(melted)
- 1/3 cup Almonds (roasted, sliced or chopped)
- 1 Egg
- 1 tsp Orange zest
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- ¼ tsp Salt
- 1 tsp Vanilla essence
- 1 Egg white for brushing
Method:
- Sift together salt, baking powder and flour.
- Melt butter. Mix sugar, butter, egg and vanilla essence.
- Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and mix till well blended. Add the almonds and mix again.
- Cover the baking tray with parchment paper or aluminium foil.
- Shape the dough into a log, transfer to the baking tray and brush with whisked egg white.
- Bake at 170 deg C for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and cool.
- Using a sharp serrated knife cut the log into even slices. Using the knife in a saw like action reduces chances of the log slices breaking unevenly.
- Place the cut slices of the tray and bake again at the same temperature for 15 minutes.
- Cool and serve with tea/coffee.
Source: The original recipe can be found on Smittenkitchen.
Mandira’s Notes:
Biscotti reminds me of rusk-in shape and texture but in flavour it reminds me of a dry fruit cookie. I made 1/3 rd of the original recipe so I got 1 log and about 14 pieces. I skipped the orange zest all together because I didn’t have any oranges at home and was unwilling to go shopping for one ingredient. I could have used a dash of orange essence but it wouldn’t have been the same. When you add zest to a baked product, you get the flavour of the citrus food when ever you eat a piece with the zest. If you add an essence to the dough, the entire dough and thus the baked product gets that particular flavour. So you cant really substitute essence for zest. Even with just the almonds and vanilla essence, my biscotti had a nice flavour. I skipped the brushing with egg white as well.
Lakshmi’s Notes: I made half of this recipe. I don’t recommend substituting the eggs this recipe – its very difficult to saw the biscotti log into pieces. Although I skipped the eggs – 
– and added about a 2 tablespoons of butter for each egg. I baked the log at 180 C for 30 minutes. I had to bake for 20-25 minutes the second time. I dint brush with egg white before baking the log. Neither did I add the orange zest – not a big fan of orange. But I loved the biscotti!! It was perfectly crunchy and almondy!
Walnut Raisin Drop Cookies
March 22, 2009 at 9:12 pm | In cookies | 4 CommentsTags: coconut, drop cookies, quick, raisins, walnut
The crunchiness of nuts and the softness of butter and desicated coconut. Umm..perfect!:)
Ingredients:
- ¼ C Crushed walnuts
- ¼ C Raisins(kishmish)
- ¼ C Desiccated coconut
- ½ C Maida
- 1 tsp Baking powder
- ¼ C Softened butter
- ¼ C Sugar
- 1 egg (or 2 tbsp of butter)
- ½ tsp Vanilla essence
Method:
- Sift flour and baking powder.
- Beat sugar and butter till light. Add egg and vanilla and beat till well mixed.
- Add flour-b.p., walnuts and raisins. Mix gently.
- Prepare a baking tray by greasing it lightly.
- Put spoonfuls of the batter on the tray keeping sufficient distance in between. Use a spoon to “drop” the batter onto the sheet to get irregular shape cookies. You should get about 15.
- Bake at 160 deg C for 20-25 mins.
Lakshmi’s Notes: I substituted the egg with 2 tablespoons of butter. These cookies are absolutely fabulous and take very little time to bake.
Mandira’s Notes:I love these cookies!! and my colleagues love them more than I do!
-
Foodies who stopped by said..
visitors’ map
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
