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Indian Cookies: An Onam Experiment

September 11, 2011 By Praerna Kartha

muffins-and-cookies015I love festivals – the preparation, the rituals, the dressing up, the decoration, meeting people, gifting – so it’s a good thing that I live in India and we have plenty to go around! So when I married a Malayali, I figured there would be a whole host of South Indian festivals to add to my calndar!! Last year, I really looked forward to my first Onam. Unfortunately, AK had a terrible bout of the flu and we were housebound! So this year, we decided to make up for it.

It’s a 10 day festival, with the 10th being the grand finale. We make Pookkalam (flower carpet – usually in a particular circular pattern), visit the temple, have a Sadya (the Onam feast – usually consisting of 20-30 dishes including rice, curries, pickles, papads & banana chips served on plantain leaves).

My father in law decided to cook the Sadya, leaving me with no culinary contribution to make. Not to be left out, I decided to make some form of sweet. I wanted to make a dry form, but none of those traditional dry sweets like Barfi, Laddoo etc have I even experimented with, let alone mastered. So I thought of searching for cookies with an Indian twist and found 3 recipes I liked – Coconut, Date & Walnut, Saffron & Pistachio. All from Anushruti’s blog.  Since they are all eggless recipes, it was an added advantage as they were 100% vegetarian (usually an important consideration for festival sweets) and my granny could have some too. She misses out on all my baking cos there’s egg in the recipes!

 

And I gifted them in 4 airtight cookie jars like this:

Unfortunately, I hardly have any pictures of the process. Two main reasons: 1) I began making these at 7 am and there was NO way AK would wake up to take pics at that time; 2) I attempted some myself, but it started raining very hard and the light disappeared. I don’t have any skill with the camera and couldn’t manage anything in that light. So I’m just going to share the recipes and add some assorted pictures at the end! Sorry 🙁

I. Date & Walnut Cookies (30)

Ingredients:

225 gm whole wheat flour (Atta)
200 gm chopped dates
100 gm chopped walnuts
200 gm butter, melted
100 gm powdered sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

Method:

I preheated the oven to 150 C (top & bottom coils).

Then I sieved the flour, baking powder and baking soda together. Then I added the dates and walnuts to this dry mixture and mixed them well so the dry fruit was well coated.

I stirred the sugar into the butter while it was hot and allowed it to cool to room temperature. Then I added this to the flour and dry fruit mixture.

I tried mixing it with a wooden spoon but got frustrated quickly, so switched to kneading with my hands! Once the dough had come together, I felt it was a little dry so I added about 3 tbsp of milk and mixed it again.

Then I rolled the dough out on my counter to about 1/2″ thickness and used my 2.5 ” diameter round cookie cutter to cut out the cookies. Then I placed them on a butter paper lined cookie sheet and baked them for about 15 mins per batch, until golden. The recipe said I would get 25, but I got almost 32 cookies, probably because of my cookie cutter’s size.

II. Saffron & Pistachio (20)

Ingredients:

1/4 tsp saffron strands
2 tsp warm milk
4 green cardamom pods
10 shelled green pistachios, chopped finely
100 gm flour
50 gm powdered sugar
50 gm butter

Method:

I soaked the saffron in the warm milk for about 10-15 mins and ground the cardamoms in my mortar pestle.

In the mortar pestle, I ground the saffron and milk to a paste.

I beat the butter, sugar, saffron paste and cardamom together till light and creamy. Adding the flour, I formed it into a dough and kneaded it with my hands for a few minutes.

Rolling it to 1/2″ thickness on my counter, I cut the dough into cookies using the 2.5″ dia round cookie cutter and placed them on the lined cookie tray. I sprinkled the pistachios on top and baked them at 150 C for 15 mins per batch.

III. Coconut Cookies (24 bite sized or 12 larger cookies)

Ingredients:

100 gms flour
50 gms butter
50 gms sugar
50 gms finely grated coconut (I used dried, but fresh would work better)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla

Method:

I mixed the flour and baking powder.

Then I beat the butter and sugar together till light and creamy. Added in the flour, coconut, vanilla essence and milk and formed a dough.

The original recipe said to roll it into a log and slice biscuits but I decided to divide the dough into 24 peices and rolled them into balls, flattened them and pressed down gently witha  fork to make a ridged pattern.

I placed these on the lined cookie sheet and baked them at 150 C for 15 mins.

Happy Onam…!!

Filed Under: All Recipes, Cookies, Muffins, Brownies & Bars, Desserts, Festive, Indian Tagged With: Coconut, Cookies, Dates, Eggless Cookies, Festive Cooking, Fruit & Nut, Indian Cookies, Pistachios, Saffron, Walnuts

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