Jeera Biscuits / Cumin Flavored Cookies

Being a sweet tooth family,we love to have salty version of cookies a lot than the sugar cookies.When we were in NJ used to get these biscuits from the popular shop Hot breads.But after moving to PA miss those goodies a lot.But never forget to visit the shop when we are travelling to NJ.
Coming to this recipe I noted down roughly when I was watching this in a T.V show long time back and slightly altered it to our taste.In the original recipe,a tbs of custard powder is used and the amount of sugar given is around 6 tbs.Since I ran out of custard powder,didn't use it,the cookies were so crunchy and turned out good.This cookies stayed fresh even after two weeks,lets move on to the recipe................................................

                                                                        

                                                                     Jeera Biscuits/Cumin Flavored Cookies

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   Basic Information

   Preparation time 15 minutes

   Resting time 1-11/2 hours

   Cooking time 20 minutes

   Makes 24-26 cookies

    

  Ingredients

Ingredient	Quantity
All purpose flour/maida	11/2 cups
Semolina/rava/sooji	2 tbs
Butter/vennai	1/2 cup
Olive oil or any neutral oil	3 tbs
Baking powder	1 tsp
Baking soda	1/8 tsp
Salt	3/4 tsp
Sugar/sakkarai	1/4 cup
Cumin seeds/jeergam	1 tsp
Milk	3-4 tbs or as needed

  

  Method 

• Mix in all purpose flour,semolina,baking soda and powder,salt,keep it aside.

• In a bowl take the butter,oil and sugar till beat with an electric blender or hand blender till it becomes creamy.To .this add the flour mixture and mix it well.

• Now with hands knead it well and add milk if needed.Now on a floured surface roll the dough to a log and wrap with a cling wrap.Refrigerate the log for an hour or two.

• After an hour of refrigeration take out the rolled dough and unwrap the cling wrap.Meanwhile preheat the oven at 350F.Slice the rolled dough with a sharp knife to approximately 1/4 inch thick.Arrange it on a lined baking tray an inch apart.Bake it in the preheated oven for 18-20 minutes or till the cookies become nice and golden color at the top.

• After cooling store it in an air tight container.Serve with tea.

• As these cookies spread slightly,arrange it in the baking tray an inch apart.
• Addition of semolina gives a very nice crunch to the cookies,it can be avoided,its personal preference.
• The amount of sugar given is perfect,but if you want it can be increase up to 6 tbs.

Enjoy...........................................................

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

An InLinkz Link-up

Sumber http://www.naliniscooking.com

Checkerboard Cookies/Eggless Checker Board Cookies

Today's recipe for the Blogging Marathon #51 is going to be eggless checker board cookies.These cookies can be made with 4 to 12 checks but I made it with 9 checks.
These cookies are mouth melting and crunchy with a nice mixed taste of vanilla and chocolate.But when I made these cookies,by mistake I added 2 tbs of cocoa powder that's the reason its in a deep brown color.Also the white dough was spreaded little,so try to keep it in refrigerator for 30 more minutes.Also I used the fresh home made butter made from the cream.Off to the recipe.................................

                                                                        

                                                                                                              Checker Board Cookies

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   Basic Information

   Preparation time 25 minutes
   Resting time 1-2 hours

   Cooking time 10-12 minutes

   Makes 12-14 cookies

    

  Ingredients

  For the Vanilla Dough

Ingredient	Quantity
All purpose flour	3/4 cup
Granulated sugar	4 tbs
Unsalted Butter(room temperature)	4 tbs
Vanilla extract	1 tsp
Baking powder	a pinch
Salt	a pinch

For the Chocolate Dough

Ingredient	Quantity
All purpose flour	3/4 cup
Granulated sugar	5 tbs
Unsalted Butter(room temperature)	4 tbs
Cocoa powder	1 tbs
Baking powder	a pinch
Salt	a pinch

  

  Method 

• In a bowl mix in the all purpose flour,baking powder and salt.Set it aside.Cream the butter, and sugar together well.Add the vanilla extract,to this add the flour mixture.

• Knead it to a soft dough,if the dough is crumbly,add some milk.Now to make chocolate dough,mix in the cocoa powder,flour,baking powder and salt.Cream the butter and sugar well and to this add the flour mixture and mix it to form a dough.If needed add some milk.

• Slightly flatten the dough separately and form a rectangular or square slab.Flatten the chocolate dough slightly bigger for this pattern as it needs 5 strips.Wrap it with a cling wrap and refrigerate in for an hour or two.Now remove the wrap carefully and cut the vanilla dough to 4 strips and chocolate dough to 5 strips.Arrange the bottom layer with two chocolate and one vanilla dough alternatively.Do the middle layer by 2 vanilla and chocolate dough alternately.Do the final layer as the first one.While arranging slightly push each strip to get attached well.

• Pre heat the oven at350 F.Now carefully slice the log with the knife and arrange it on a lined baking tray,an inch apart.Bake it in the pre heated oven for 12-14 minutes.Cool it on a wire rack and store it.

• Serve it as a snack along with milk or as such.

• While arranging the strips slightly press to get attached and even after slicing also slightly press it.
• Instead of cutting into strips you can roll the dough to a cylindrical coil and do it .

Enjoy.........................................................

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

An InLinkz Link-up

Sumber http://www.naliniscooking.com

Jam filled Pinwheel Cookies

We are in the 3rd week of Blogging Marathon#51 and under the eggless cookies theme I am sharing a simple and cute looking cookies.I bookmarked this recipe from Priya's blog where Divya shared it in a guest post.
These cookies were made with egg and cream cheese but I made an eggless version.Also used thick yogurt instead of cream cheese and powdered sugar as it has a considerable amount of corn starch helps in binding.Any type of jam can be used,you can either keep it inside and fold or fold it and keep it on the top.
One of my friend's daughter who is a teen helped me out to roll the cookies and so humble to be a hand model to hold the cookie.Now off to the recipe........................................

                                                                        

                                                                                                 Jam Filled Pinwheel Cookies

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   Basic Information

   Preparation time 25 minutes
   Resting time 1-2 hours

   Cooking time 10-12 minutes

   Makes 18-20 cookies

    

  Ingredients

Ingredient	Quantity
All purpose flour	1 cup
Powdered sugar	6 tbs
Unsalted Butter(room temperature)	5 tbs
Yogurt/thayir	3 tbs
Vanilla extract	1 tsp
Baking powder	1/2 tsp
Baking soda	a pinch
Any seedless jam variety	2 -3 tbs
Chopped nuts(cashew/pistachio)	2 tbs
Milk (if needed)	2 tbs

  

  Method 

• In a bowl mix in the all purpose flour,baking powder,soda and salt.Set it aside.Cream the butter,yogurt and powdered sugar together well.Add the vanilla extract,to this add the flour mixture.

• Knead it to a soft dough,if the dough is crumbly,add some milk.Wrap it with a cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour.After an hour take a big gooseberry size dough and roll it to thin round on a floured surface.

• With the help of pizza cutter or knife the round shaped flatten dough to a square of 2x2 inches as shown.Cut the four edges slightly and keep the center portion intact.Fold each cut edge as shown to form a pinwheel.

• Keep a dollop of jam in the center of the pinwheel or keep the jam in the center before folding and fold the edges to form a pinwheel.

• Arrange it on a lined baking tray and sprinkle chopped nuts on the top of the cookies.Bake it for 10-12 minutes in a pre-heated oven at 350 F.Let the cookies gets cool down completely.

• Store it in an air tight container

• While folding to a pinwheel if the dough is getting cracked apply some milk and fold it.
• Here I used strawberry jam and chopped cashews.

Enjoy.....................................................

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

An InLinkz Link-up

Sumber http://www.naliniscooking.com

Kaju Cookies /Cashew Cookies

Today's recipe is going to a be crunchy and mouth melting,rich cookies with cardamom flavor.I have tasted these type of cookies in India in local bakery shop.So wanted to recreate those cookies and tried couple of times but I couldn't get the exact taste of the store bought one.After so many trials I found a perfect recipe here.I slightly altered the original recipe to our taste.As we prefer mildly sweet cookies I reduced the amount of sugar and made it.Also in the original recipe store bought cashew meal is used.But here I powdered the cashews and used it.The cookies were so crunchy and delicious and we like it a lot.With no further delay lets move on to the recipe.............................

                                                                        

                                                                                                     Kaju Cookies/Cashew Cookies

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   Basic Information

   Preparation time 15 minutes
   Resting time 1-2 hours

   Cooking time 18-20 minutes

   Makes 25-28 cookies

    

  Ingredients

Ingredient	Quantity
All purpose flour	11/4 cups
Powdered sugar	1/2 cup
Unsalted Butter	1/2 cup
Neutral Cooking oil	2 tbs
Cashew meal or powdered cashew	1/4 cup
Chopped cashews	1/2 cup
Baking powder	1 tsp
Baking soda	1/8 tsp
Corn starch	1 tbs
Cardamom powder/ellakai podi	1/8 tsp
Milk (if needed)	2 tbs
Oil	2 tsp

  

  Method 

• Powder the cashews in a blender till it becomes bit coarse and keep it aside.In a bowl mix in the all purpose flour,cashew meal,corn starch,baking powder,soda and salt.Set it aside.Cream the butter,oil and powdered sugar together well.

• Now add in the flour mixture and mix it well.Now the dough will be crumbly,to this add around 1/4 cup of the chopped cashews and cardamom powder,mix it well to form a dough.If needed use couple of tbs of milk.

• Line baking tray with the parchment paper or foil.Take a small gooseberry size of dough and flatten with the palms and keep it on the baking tray.Press in gently 4-5 pieces of chopped cashews on top of the flatten dough.Continue for the rest of the dough.Cover the baking tray with the cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour or two.Bake it in a 300F pre-heated oven for 18-20 minutes(mine took 20 minutes).

• Cool it on a cooling rack and store it in an air tight container.

• Instead of flatten the dough and keep it in the refrigerator,make the dough into a log and keep it refrigerated.Then slice and bake it.
• As these cookies tend to spread,arrange the cookies an inch apart in  the baking tray.

Enjoy............................................

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

An InLinkz Link-up

Sumber http://www.naliniscooking.com

Tea Shop Style Butter Biscuits/Tea Kadai Butter Biscuits

We are in week #3 April of Blogging Marathon#51 and for this week I am going to share eggless cookies.
Today's recipe is a simple and popular cookies aka biscuits popular in most of the Tea shops in Tamilnadu.
These biscuits are crunchy,mouth melting and delicious even without any fancy ingredients and flavoring agent.
These cookies/biscuits are so close to my heart,as this cookie was the first bake in my life. After I came to US,the first thing baked in the oven was this cookie.
This cookie I noted it 15 years back from a local bakery shop baker.The recipe was given roughly in kilo measurement.
The cookie was not only my first bake and did not aware about the number of cookies for 1 kilogram of all purpose flour.After seeing the convention oven got excited and blindly follow the recipe and mixed roughly a kilogram of  all purpose flour.Finally made more than 50 cookies for 2 of us.The cookie was not bad for the first time.Since no hand blender or electric blender to cream the butter,I used my wooden dhal masher(paruppu mathu).
After so so many trials and scaled down measurement,I am making this cookie perfect.In the original recipe the refrigeration was not mentioned.But I personally feel refrigerating the dough helps to hold the shape and also prevents the dough from spreading.Here I didn't use any flavoring agent but it can be used according to personal preference.
This cookie was the first recipe I made for this Blogging Marathon series in December in my brand new oven.It was bit difficult to understand the oven temperature,so reduced the temperature to 340 F instead of 350 F.As I was ran out parchment paper I used aluminium foil to line the tray.Thats why the bottom of the cookies turned brown faster.After that I stopped using aluminium foil for lining and reduced the temperature to 10 F of the given temperature.Lets move on to the recipe............................

                                                                        

                                                                                         Tea Shop Style Butter Biscuits

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   Basic Information

   Preparation time 10 minutes

   Resting time 1 hour

   Baking time 12-14 minutes

   Makes 18-20 

    

  Ingredients

  

Ingredient	Quantity
All purpose flour/maida	1 cup
Rice flour/arisi maavu	2 tbs
Butter/vennai(room temperature)	1/2 cup
Granulated sugar(powdered)	5 tbs
Salt	a pinch
Vanilla extract(optional)	1/2 tsp

  

  Method 

• Powder the granulated sugar in a  blender to a fine powder.In a separate bowl,mix the all purpose flour,rice flour and salt well.Keep it aside.Now in take the butter and powdered sugar in a bowl.Beat it with a electrical or hand blender till it becomes creamy.To this add the flour mixture and mix it well.Knead it to a soft dough.

• Now roll the dough to a log and wrap it in a cling wrap and refrigerate for an hour.After an hour remove the wrap and slice the cookies to 1/2 inch thickness.Meanwhile pre-heat the oven at 350 F.Arrange it on a lined baking tray ,use a fork prick it on the top of the cookies to give a pattern.Bake it for 12-14 minutes and remove it from the oven.Cool the cookies on a cooling rack and store it in an air tight container after cooling.

• Serve it with tea.

• As these cookies bake faster,keep an eye after 10 minutes otherwise it may burnt.
• Addition of rice flour gives a very nice crunch to the cookies.
• The amount of sugar given is perfect,but if you want it can be increase up to 1/2 cup.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 51

An InLinkz Link-up

Sumber http://www.naliniscooking.com