Masala herb cookies

Savoury trinkets....

every indian loves kharis, and butters, and toasts...what if you get smething similar, but with added flavour, and a bit healthier..everyone is gonna say WHY NOT...

I loved the flavor of these cookies and the versatality, the herbs can easlisy be changed to whatever herbs you want to add and you can add or reduce, any herb that you don't have a liking for. The final cookies have a very subtly sweet n savory flavour that goes really well with a steaming cup of tea. It also make a nice snack to add to your little one's tiffin.

I adapted this recipe to my liking.

                          

Ingredients:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat
2 tablespoons fine white or brown rice flour (optional)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt (or according to your taste)
1/2 cup chilled butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 tsp dried ginger powder (optional)
1-1/2 teaspoon whole peppercorn, crushed coarsely
1-1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted and crushed coarsely
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
1-1/2 tablespoons finely chopped curry leaves
1 tablespoon each finely chopped fresh cilantro,mint and dill leaves
3 to 4 tablespoons cold yogurt
2 -3 tbsp toasted sesame seeds or flaxseeds or both.
A little oil to brush the tops of the biscuits/ cookies

Instructions
Put both flours, salt, baking powder and baking soda into the bowl of a food processor and add the pieces of chilled butter. Pulse until the mixture takes on the texture of breadcrumbs.
Now add the crushed peppercorn and cumin, sugar, the chopped curry leaves and coriander leaves. Pulse a couple of times to mix well.
Then add 2 tablespoons of yogurt and pulse again. Add one more tbsp of yogurt (or two, as much as needed), and pulse again until the dough just comes together and clumps together. You want a moist dough, not a wet one – somewhat like pie dough.
Do not over process or knead. The dough should be just moist enough for you to use your hands and bring everything together to shape into a ball. Flatten it into a disc and cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least hour. You can also leave it overnight (up to about 24 hours) and work on it the next day.
Pre-heat your oven to moderate 170 degrees and line your baking trays with parchment or grease them with oil.
Lightly dust your working surface and roll out the dough to 1/8”(3 mm) thickness, not more or your biscuits/ cookies will not be crisp. If using Sesame seeds, sprinkle it uniformly over the dough and use your rolling pin, very lightly, to press them in.Using cutters of your choice (about 2-1/4 inch in size), cut out biscuits/ cookies and place them on lightly greased baking trays. Brush a very thin coat of oil over them. This will help them brown while baking. Bake them in a preheated moderate oven for about 20 to 25 minutes or till they’re done and golden brown on the top. Remember the baking time will depend on the thickness and shape of your biscuits/ cookies. Let them cool on the trays for about 5 minutes and then cool them on racks. Once they’re completely cool, they should be a bit crunchy and not chewy.

I improvised and used my son's shape
 toys as cookie cutters to get all kinds of shapes

perfect for the tiffin !!

round one's to have with tea

hazelnut thumprint cookies

Fun Prints...

Thumprint cookies look cute and are yum...they are also very versatile, you can fill them with any filling of your liking.. I especially like the soft crumbly cookie...reminded me of the cookies we used to get in lebanese bakeries....
the recipe is also very very simple and you can have a batch of cookies ready with hardly any fuss.
Its a classic hershey's recipe so you can't go wrong with it...

Ingredients:

chocolate ganache or nutella
1/3 cup Cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped hazelnuts (or any other nut)
2 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 egg
1/2 cup butter or margarine
2/3 cup sugar

Method:

1. Beat butter, sugar, egg yolk, milk and vanilla in medium bowl until fluffy. Stir together flour, cocoa and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until blended. Refrigerate dough at least 1 hour or until firm enough to handle.

2. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease cookie sheet or line with parchment paper. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. With fork, beat egg white slightly. Dip each ball into egg white; roll in nuts. Place on prepared cookie sheet. Press thumb gently in center of each cookie.

3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until set.

Remove cookies from cookie sheet to wire rack; cool 5 minutes. Spoon about 1/4 teaspoon ganache into each thumbprint.

Cool completely.

makes about 24 cookies

I tried the same recipe by substituting

 1/3 cup of ground almond and sesame seeds instead of the cocoa powder to make some almond cookies, and added a little bit of almond essence.. and got really nice chewy almond cookies.

Orange wafer cookies

Sweet Nostalgia.....

Most of my baking experiments are trials to recreate stuff that was once readily available to me in Abu Dhabi, and now in Mumbai I simply crave for them sometime...

One of these aforementioned cravings is for these orange wafer cookies..i don't remember the brand name, or even what they were called, i only remember picking up the orange box of tiny cookies, every time we were in the biscuit section of any supermarket.

so naturally when i was deprived of the yummy snack in Mumbai, i went in search for a recipe that would recreate them, and luckily found the perfect one, on my first try (what were the chances of that, without even a name of the cookie).

I really didn't have to change anything in the recipe....like i sadi, the recipe perfectly recreates my favorite orange cookie, 

BEWARE !! You can't just have one..

Ingredients:
½ Cup Butter Softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon orange extract or 2 tbsp orange juice
1 cup all-purpose flour
5 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon salt
Thin orange or lemon peel strips, optional

Method:

In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, orange peel, lemon peel and extracts. In another bowl, mix the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into creamed mixture.

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inche. apart onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets. If desired, top with orange peel strips.

Bake at 180°C for 6-8 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. 
Yield: about 4 dozen.

Little rounds of perfection ...

Praline Oatmeal cookies

Leftovers are not a bad thing...

Provided you know how to present them, you see the minute you tell people that you have used "left over "something in a recipe, or that you made this so and so treat to finish up something "leftover" from a previous recipe, they become apprehensive about tasting it.

But if you are clever enough to use up your leftovers and not mentioning that tiny detail to your family and friends you become a master chef in their eyes.(and no one is none the wiser).

I pride myself in using leftover ingredients that i had prepared for a certain recipe for some other recipe in innovative ways(hope i don't sound like i'm boasting).

I mean the ideas are endless once you put your head to it.
I can list a number of recipes i just made to finish off leftover somethings...

leftover egg yolks - creme caramel

leftover caramel - millionare's shortbread bars
mint truffles gone to soft - chocolate mint brownies
stale cake - trifle
and so on and on the list goes.
So when i had left over almond pralines after my almond pralines and custard cake, I thought why not put them in some cookies. and whats healthier than some oatmeal cookies.

Ingredients:

1 cup flour

1/2 tsp soda

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 cup oats

1/2 - 3/4th cup chopped almond praline

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 degree centigrade . Mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Set aside, beat the butter and sugars, with an electric mixer on medium until light and fluffy; add eggs and vanilla; mix well.

gradually beat in flour mixture on low speed until well mixed; stir in the oats and the chopped pralines.

drop rounded tablespoons on a greased baking tray, or parchment paper.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes or until lightly browned.

I covered some of the cookies with some melted chocolate, but that's your choice; they taste great just as it is too..

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Some classics need no introduction or description, And fresh out of the oven chocolate chip cookies is one of them.
i myself am not a big fan of cookies...i mean i like to have one or two once in a while but would always prefer a cake to a cookie, and hence i rarely bake cookies, because the recipes are usually for big batches that i know i'm not gonna eat. But once in a while my brothers either force me or bribe or blackmail me (in return for some other favor) to bake them their favorite cookies. And hence the cookies.

this is a classic hershey's chocolate chip cookie recipe that i got from the back of the hershey's chocolate chips packet many years ago...it turned out pretty perfect and i never felt the need to go looking for another recipe, although over the years i have started substituting half of the all purpose flour with whole wheat. it still turns out pretty perfect and nobody has to know about the whole wheat.

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 ¼ cup whole wheat flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened

½ cup granulated sugar

¾ cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

2 cups chocolate chips

1 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Method:

Preheat oven to 180°C

sift the flours and keep aside.

In a large bowl beat butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla until creamy. Add eggs and beat well. Gradually add the flour mixture beating well.

Stir in the chocolate chips and chopped nuts.

Drop by rounded teaspoons unto ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes until lightly browned.

Makes around 5 dozen cookies.

I reserved some of the plane cookie dough(before adding the chocolate chips), kept it in the fridge overnight and made chocofils with it.
all you have to do is shape small portions into a ball shape, make an indentation in the middle and fill it with a small piece of chocolate, close the dough ball so that the chocolate is in the middle and bake the same way as the chocolate chip cookies.
And voila...yummy chocofils..that even a non cookie person like me ate quite a few.















You can also bake plain cookies and sandwich
them caramel sauce or chocolate ganache. to make
sandwich cookies.

Coffee Walnut Cookies

I think these are one of the first cookies i had made, back when i was a teenager and had started venturing into the world of baking, which at that time mostly consisted of pilsburry cake mixes.
what i like about the recipe is that, unlike most coffee recipes, the coffee flavor doesn't jump at you on the first bite, rather it has a very subtle coffee flavor.
this recipe is from my mom's huge box file which has like more than a hundred recipes, sometimes just to leaf through that file gives more ideas than surfing the net for recipes.

Ingredients:

150 g flour (or 50/50 with whole wheat flour)

80 g butter, softened

75 g powdered sugar

1 tsp coffee

50 g walnuts, crushed

1 – 2 tsp milk

Method:

Cream butter and sugar, until light and fluffy. Add the flour, coffee. Stir in the walnuts Mix till it forms into firm dough. Add a little milk if too dry.

Roll on a dusted surface, and cut into desired shapes.

Bake at 160°C for 10 – 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

Date Squares

Sugar Free can be sweet....

When people hear sugar free related to any desert they automatically think " it contains artificial sweeteners", i don't believe in replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners..just for the sake of making a desert sugar free...i would rather eat a little less to control my sugar intake. Also don't listen to the advertisements for artificial sweeteners - they don't taste the same as sugar and using them as much as sugar is not healthy.

naturally sweet ingredients on the other hand, can replace sugar in some desserts and nobody will even find out that it doesn't contain sugar.(unless u want to tell them)

I found this recipe on joyofbaking and when i tried it out and served it at home everyone liked it but felt that it was a bit too sweet. so the next time i tried it i just cut out the sugar. i also substituted the all purpose flour for whole wheat. (healthier and it gives it a more rustic flavor and color)

so this is one of those recipes that u can kind of eat guilt free or serve to someone who is trying to cut their sugar intake.

its also pretty simple and requires very little time.

Ingredients

Date Filling:

3 cups (400 grams) pitted dried dates

1 cup (240 ml) water

Oatmeal Crust:

2 cups (200 grams) old fashioned rolled oats

1 cup (130 grams) wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¾ cup (175 grams) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Method

Date Filling:Place the dates and water in a medium saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the dates are soft and have absorbed most of the water (about 5 - 10 minutes). Remove from heat, Let it cool to room temperature and then puree in your food processor until smooth. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (177 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven. Grease an 8 x 11 inch (20 x 28 cm) or  a 9 x 9 inch (23 x 23 cm) pan. Line the bottom of the pan with parchment paper. Set aside.

Oatmeal Crust: In the bowl of your food processor, place the  oats, flour, baking soda, salt and ground cinnamon. Pulse to combine. Then add the butter and pulse until the mixture is crumbly. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the base of the prepared pan.

Spread the dates evenly over the oatmeal crust. Sprinkle the remaining dough evenly over the top of the dates. Bake for about 30 -40 minutes or until golden brown. Place on a wire rack to cool. Once the squares have cooled, cover the pan with plastic wrap, and place in the refrigerator at least one hour or until firm enough to cut easily into squares.

These will keep, covered, in the refrigerator up to a week.

Makes about 20 - 2 inch squares.

you can also try this recipe with other fillings, such as any fruit jam or chocolate ganache....off course them it won't be sugar free....