If you are from India you will definitely love these biscuits popularly known as butter biscuits, ghee biscuits or nei biscuits available in almost all the bakeries and grocery stores.
These can also be compared to the shortbread cookies available in western countries. To be frank I never knew these can be made at home so easily with the conventional oven and of course without eggs. I searched for the recipes in various blogs and created my own with the ingredients available from my pantry. here it goes,
Ingredients:
standard self raising flour or maida - 1 cup
powdered or castor sugar - 1/2 cup
ghee or butter - as much as u need to knead the dough or approx. 6 table spoons
(I used ghee in room temperature)
baking powder - 1/2 tea spoon
baking soda - 1/2 tea spoon
vanilla essence - 1 tea spoon (variation - 1/2 spoon powdered elaichi)
method:
In a large bowl combine all the dry ingredients together and mix well.
now add the ghee or butter lil by lil which is in room temperature and mix well and keep
kneading till you get a firm dough. DO NOT USE WATER OR MILK TO BIND THE DOUGH.
you should only use butter or ghee.
finally add the vanilla essence (not if u r using eleichi) and mix well.
this dough will not be as firm as chapathi or puri dough as u hav'nt added any water.
so do not worry about that. make round balls jus like u make for gulab jamoons and press a little,
(again remember do not press too much) to make a small round shape. These biscuits will
expand in height and width while baking.
line a baking sheet with aluminium foil and grease the foil with butter or ghee.
place the prepared rounds with enough space inbetween on the sheet.
preheat the oven for 10 minutes to 350 degree.
while the oven is set to preaheat keep the tray (with the biscuits) i.e., atleast fro 10 min in the
fridge.
once the oven is preheaed place the tray in the oven, reduce the heat to 100 degree and bake for
12-15 minutes.
the baking time varies from oven to oven so trial and error method always helps.
You can see 2 kinds of biscuits in the foto given. the white biscuits are the prefect ones and the
brown biscuits are the first batch which I made. It was somewhat overcooked (or over-baked)
so I reduced the baking time for the 2nd batch and it was perfect.
I Hope u like these...
Merry Christmas!!
