Pistachio Shortbread

Pistachio Shortbread

This recipe is adapted from Relish magazine that occasionally comes with our newspaper.

Here's how I made these Pistachio Shortbread:

1 stick butter thawed
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
Zest of 1 large lemon
pinch of salt
1 cup plain flour
1/3 cup chopped toasted shelled pistachio
handful of white and semi-sweet chocolate chips

Microwave butter for 30 sec. Mix the butter and sugar in a large bowl.

Whisk vigorously for 5 mins until light and fluffy.

Add the vanilla essence, salt and lemon zest. Mix well. Add the flour, pistachios and chocolate chips. 

Mix gently until just combined, do not over mix.

Roll out into 1/4 inch thick disc. Cut into desired shapes and place on parchment lined baking sheet.

 

Bake in a preheated 325F oven for 20 to 25 mins until edges turn slightly brown.

 

I had made these shortbread cookies over the 2 week winter break for the first time. Today I made them again for my daughter and took the above pictures.

Sending this recipe to Kid's delight hosted my My Cooking Journey.

Eggless Vanilla Pudding Cookies

Hello everyone. Wish you all a very happy and healthy 2012. We are back in Seattle after a wonderful vaction in Mumbai and Singapore.

We have had snow for the past 6 days and except for a brief respite last Tuesday, have been pretty much home-tied since last Saturday. My daughter has been after me to bake some cookies, so today we made these lovely and easy Eggless Vanilla Pudding Cookies from Madhuram's Eggless Cooking.

Here's how I made these:

6 tbsp unsalted butter at room temperature
2 tbsp Jello Vanilla flavor instant pudding mix
2 tsp sugar
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp All Purpose Flour
few drops of vanilla essence
Handful of chopped and toasted walnuts

Cream the butter, pudding mix and sugar together. I used an electric hand blender for this. Add flour in 2 - 3 installments and keeping folding it in gently until well incorporated. Add the vanilla essence and walnuts. Knead gently. The dough will be like chapati/roti dough.

Divide the dough into 12 - 14 portions of abt 1 tbsp each. Roll each gently into a ball and flatten a little. Place on a baking sheet covered with wax paper. Bake these cookies in an oven preheated to 375F, for abt 11 mins. Remove and cool 5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

My daughter and her friends loved these and they were gone in no time. My dad also liked them, he said they tasted like the Indian cookie - Nankhatai.

I loved them for the delicious taste and ease of preparation. I will surely make them over & over again.

Almond Cookies

These delightful cookies are very similar to the Walnut Cookies I posted some time back. I used the same proportions, except I sedd additional 2 tbsp butter and 3 tbsp brown sugar instead of white. The cookie dough was a little dryer/crumblier than before. But I could easily pat it into my baking pan.

The Almond cookies came out wonderfully crisp and delicious....not too sweet, with the dusted sugar adding a touch of extra sweetness.

These Almond Cookies go to the Almond Dessert Event at Anuz Healthy Kitchen. This event was started by Raven.

Walnut Diamond Cookies

I have adapted this recipe from the Dec. 2009 issue of Prevention magazine. As I was browsing thru it, this recipe instantly caught my eye - for one, it was eggless and secondly the combination of nuts, spices and sugar seemed irresistable to me. The original recipe used pecans and cinnamon, but I instantly decided to replace with walnuts and all-spice blend. I always stock both these since they are on top of my favorites list. All-spice is usually a blend of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

Here's how I make these cookies:

1/3 cup walnuts - microwave at 30 second intervals for 3 mins in all and cool
1/2 cup plain flour
2 heaped tbsp whole wheat flour
pinch of salt
1/2 tsp all-spice powder
2 heaped tbsp granulated sugar
1/4 cup unsalted butter - at room temperature
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tbsp powdered sugar

In a clean, dry bowl, mix the plain flour, wheat flour, salt and all-spice.
In a mini food processor, chop the toasted walnuts with 3 tbsp of the flour mixture until the texture of fine crumbs is achieved.
Add this nut-flour mixture back into the flour mixture in the bowl.
In another bowl, combine the granulated sugar, butter and vanilla extract. Beat together until well combined. This can be done either manually or with an electric hand mixer. For the quantity given above, I usually do it manually, but use an electric mixer to make a bigger batch.
Gradually add the nut-flour mixture to the butter-sugar mix. Mix well and form into a big ball.
Pat this ball down on an aluminium foil. Then using a rolling pin, roll it out till it is about 1/4 inch thick evenly. The cookie dough is not at all sticky and you should be able to easily roll it out. Also, it does not really matter if you roll it out into a square/rectangle/circle.
Then cut the rolled dough into diamond shapes or any other shape per your choice.
Place on a baking sheet (along with the foil)
Bake in a pre-heated 350F oven for 20 minutes or till the edges are golden brown.
Cool the cookies, sift powdered sugar lightly over them and enjoy.






This quantity yields about 1 dozen diamond-shaped cookies.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I came across this recipe in the Nov/Dec 09 edition of Vegetarian Times. It claims to be the "Heart Healthiest Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World" since it contains no butter, eggs or maida. I made these during my daughter's playdate and the little girls (and this big one) enjoyed gobbling it up.

Here's the recipe (makes about 15 cookies):

1.5 cups walnuts

1.5 tbsp canola oil

1/2 c. brown sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 c. oat flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 th tsp cardamon pwd

1 cup rolled oats

3/4 c. chocolate chips

- Preheat oven to 375F. Coat a large baking sheet with cooking spray.

- Mix the brown sugar with 1/4 c. water and bring to a boil. Take off heat.

- Add the walnuts, oil and vanilla extract to this. Blend till smooth.

- In a separate bowl, mix the oat flour, baking soda, salt and cardamon pwd. Stir this flour mix into the walnut mix.

- Then add the rolled oats and chocolate chips to the mix.

- Shape the dough into about 15 2 inch balls. Lay them on the baking sheet. Flatten the cookies with the bottom of a drinking glass dipped in water.

- Bake 10 -12 minutes till they begin to brown. Cool 3 minutes on the baking sheet, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

These Heart Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies are off to the Cakes & Cookies event Spices etc.

Shortbread Spirals

My daughter and I recently made these from the Kids' Baking book by Sara Lewis. We had a lot of fun prepping these together and the end product was pretty good too...although not too sugary sweet. Here's how er made them:

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa pwd

1 tbsp boiling water

1 cup butter - at room temperature

2.5 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup superfine sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Dissolve the cocoa pwd in the boiling water until smooth. I had to add a few more drops for this.

2. Mix the butter, flour and sugar into a crumbly mix. Divide equally between 2 mixing bowls.

3. In one bowl, add the vanilla extract. I also added a few tsp milk to make it a little more pliable and easy for my daughter to work with. Knead well and keep aside.

4. Add the cocoa paste to the other bowl and knead well.

5. Roll out the two doughs between 2 sheets of parchment paper into 8 inch squares each.

6. Carefully place the cocoa dough over the vanilla dough. Roll the two together as tightly as possible.

7. Chill the roll for 15 mins. In the meanwhile, preheat oven to 325f.

8. Cut the rolls into about 16 slices. Place on ungreased baking sheet and bake for about 10 mins. Cool on the baking sheet before serving.

These shortbread spirals are off to the EFM - Cookies event at srishkitchen.

These also go to the Chocolate event at Poornima's Tasty treats.

Nankhatai

Chocolate Nankhatai

Nankhatai is a popular Indian, eggless cookie. I made a batch of these for Diwali using a recipe from Manjula's kitchen on You Tube. But I changed it up a bit for half the batch by adding cocoa and turning them into chocolate nankhatais. Here's how I made them:

1/3 cup maida (all purpose flour)

1/3 cup fine semolina

1/2 cup gram flour

A pinch of baking soda (Less than 1/8th tsp)

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

2 tbsp cocoa pwd.

1/2 cup unsalted butter (softened at room temperature)

2/3 cup powdered sugar

Almonds for garnish

Preheat oven to 350c.

Mix the first 6 ingredients well.

Make sure the sugar is of fine texture, you can pwd it in a blender if needed. Blend the sugar and butter (I used a blender for this) until soft & fluffy. Then mix the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mix and knead gently into a soft dough. Break into small round balls. Flatten each slightly. Top with half an almond. Place these on a greased baking tray and bake for about 12 mins.

I have had varying degrees of success making nankhatais in the past, but really loved how these chocolate ones came out.

These Chocolate Nankhatai's are off to FIC-Brown event at TongueTicklers.

I also made a batch of regular nankhatais using the above recipe. For making these, simply omit the vanilla essence and cocoa pwd from the above recipe. Add 1/4 tsp cardamon pwd instead. You can top the plain nankhatai with pistas, cashews, almonds or charolis. You can also add few strands of saffron to give them a good flavor. Here are my plain and chocolate nankhatais.

These Chocolate and Plain Nankhatais go to the JFI - Diwali Festival event at Cooking 4 All Seasons. JFI is the brainchild of Indira of Mahanandi.

Oh, and before I forget, these nankhatais go very well with a cup of steaming hot chocolate.

This easy, single serving of hot chocolate is just off the box of Hershey's Cocoa pwd. Here's how I make it:

1 cup milk - microwaved for 2 mins.

2 tsp sugar

2-3 tsp cocoa pwd

A pinch of salt

1/4 tsp vanilla essence

Mix the sugar, cocoa & salt in a large drinking mug. Slowly our the hot milk, stirring gently all the time. Add the vanilla, stir and enjoy.

This easy hot chocolate is also off to the FIC - Brown event at TongueTicklers.