NAN KHATAI

Nan khatai is an crunchy and delicious biscuit often made using all purpose flour (maida) and butter. But there are several varieties of nan khatai made using different ingredients. This is an eggless recipe of nan khatai made with all purpose flour, semolina and gram flour and has been adapted from Manjulas Kitchen. This recipe yields 24 to 26 nan khatais.

Ingredients

1/3 cup all purpose flour
½ cup gram flour (besan)
1/3 cup fine semolina (sooji)
Pinch of baking soda
¼ tsp cardamom powder
75 gms unsalted white butter
2/3 cup sugar
Sliced or chopped almonds (or any other nuts)

Method

Grind the semolina and sugar to a fine powder separately and keep ready. Allow the butter to come to room temperature. Meanwhile sieve all purpose flour, gram flour, soda and cardamom powder twice and mix it well with sooji. Then take a bowl and mix butter and powdered sugar to form a smooth paste. Add the flour mix little by little to the butter sugar mixture and knead to form a dough. Now preheat the oven at 180 degree Celsius for 10 minutes. Meanwhile grease your hands and pinch small balls from the dough. Shape the dough to form a circle, make marks on top of it using a knife and gently press chopped almonds on top. Now take a greased baking tray and place the biscuits on it leaving space in between as they tend to expand on baking. Place the tray in the central rack of the oven with both upper and lower rods on and bake for 10 to 15 minutes at 170 degree C till the biscuits turn golden in colour. Remove the tray from the oven and allow it to cool before taking the biscuits off the tray. Transfer to air tight containers and serve with tea.

Tips:

• If you are using a black baking tray, remove the tray from the oven when you see the base of the nan khatai getting a brown colour. The upper part might look soft but it will harden when it comes to room temperature.  
• We baked the nan khatai using the regular black tray and an aluminium tray. The ones made using the aluminium tray had an even golden brown colour, whereas that made using the black baking tray was brown at the base and light golden on top. The taste was the same but we liked the ones made with the aluminium tray better.  
• In case the biscuits are not crispy and evenly cooked on top, turn the nan khatai and place it back in the oven and bake for a few minutes. But do not over bake as it will result in very hard biscuits.