Kesar Nankhatai and Molasses Oat Bran Cookies

I have made dishes just for some events. It is not even my event, but this time I had not made anything for my own 'Baking from a Book - Cookies'. Deadline for this is today, 31st of May and here I am posting before the time is over.

I have stated before that I don't have too many Indian Cook books. One of the few books I have were bought when I first left India. I had picked up a book 'The delights of Vegetarian Cooking' by Tarla Dalal. I probably have tried only two recipes so far from that book. She has a recipe called 'Kesar Nankhatai Biscuits'. I tried them today. Do read the notes part without forgetting.

Ingredients:

• All purpose flour - 100 gms
• Fine soji - 100 gms
• Powdered sugar - 100 gms (Weigh sugar and then powder)
• Ghee - 100 gms
• Cardamom powder - 1/2 tsp
• Baking soda - 1/4 tsp
• Milk - 1 - 2 tsp for soaking few strands of saffron

Method:
In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients. Melt the ghee and pour it in the center and mix. Add the milk and make a dough and knead it a few times. If the dough is hard to handle, you can add more milk 1 tsp at a time. The recipe used about 1 tsp of curds too which I skipped and used just milk. Make balls and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 300 F. Bake for 30 - 35 minutes rotating the pan half way. Cool on the rack. Mine were done at 30 minutes itself. Cool completely before storing in an air tight container. Book says that this yields 20 biscuits, but I made mine small and got about 35 biscuits.

Notes:
These cookies tasted great. Not too sweet but are crumbly. They had a big pocket kind of hole in the middle which I suspect is due to the amount of baking soda. I think 1/4 tsp for this much is not correct. I have another recipe that I use which has 1/8th tsp baking soda for this quantity of flour, sugar and ghee ratio. If you are trying this, try it with less baking soda first and then adjust accordingly.

Molasses Oat Bran Cookies

This is from a Pillsbury 'Cookies Galore' book. There is a recipe called 'Molasses Oat Bran Cookies' which I halved and made eggless. The recipe tells you to refrigerate the cookie dough and then make balls of the dough, roll in sugar and bake. I didn't do any of those since I was pressed for time. For that reason, my cookies came out very thin and crispy rather than fat and chewy. Taste was very good, but when I make these again, I will follow the instructions so that I can get a better looking cookie.

Ingredients:

• Sugar - 1/2 cup
• Vegetable Oil - 6 TBSP
• Sour cream or yogurt - 2 TBSP
• Molasses - 2 TBSP
• Whole wheat flour - 3/4 cups
• Quick cooking rolled oats - 3/4 cups 
• Oat bran - 1/4 cup
• Baking soda - 1 tsp
• Cinnamon - 1/2 tsp
• Ginger powder - 1/4 tsp
• Salt - a pinch
• Clove powder - a pinch or 1/8 tsp
• Coarse sugar - 2 - 3 TBSP for rolling the cookie balls (optional)

Method:
In a bowl, combine sugar, oil, molasses, yogurt or sour cream. Beat well. Mix the dry ingredients in another bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to wet and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for an hour or till easy to handle. Preheat the oven to 375 F. Make 1 inch balls from the cookie dough and roll in the sugar and place on the parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for 7 - 10 minutes or till the cookies are set and tops are cracked. I chose this recipe since it had oil and not butter. I was out of butter and I didn't have time to get butter and make some rich cookies. These tasted really good except for the thickness which, I am sure can be controlled by refrigerating the dough.

Happy Baking!!