Nankhatai Recipe- Indian Shortbread Cookies

4.6 from 5 votes

Nankhatai Recipe- Indian Shortbread Cookies

Nankhatai recipe– egg free, crispy, flaky and tasty Indian shortbread cookies flavored with ghee, saffron or cardamom. These traditional eggless Indian shortbread cookies are often made with various flours like besan or gram flour , semolina mixed with all purpose flour or whole wheat flour.

Prep Time15 mins

Cook Time15 mins

Total Time30 mins

Course: Snack

Cuisine: Indian

Keyword: nankhatai

Servings: cookies

Calories: 109kcal

Author: Harini

Ingredients

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup gram flour
2 tablespoons semolina
2 tablespoons pistachios coarsely chopped
1/2 cup sugar powdered
1/3 cup ghee
1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder
A pinch of nutmeg powder
1/4 teaspoon saffron strands
A pinch of salt

Instructions

Preheat oven at 180C for 15 minutes. Before you begin make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature. The ghee should be solid. Take ghee and powdered sugar in a mixing bowl. Add cardamom powder, nutmeg and saffron.
Mix well. Whisk until light and creamy.
To the ghee sugar mixture add the flours and powdered pistachio. Mix gently. Do not knead the dough by applying pressure. Just gently bring everything together.
Divide the dough into 12-15 small balls. Flatten the ball and place some pistachios on each cookie.
Arrange in a greased cookie tray. Bake for 12-15 minutes. Let cool and store in airtight container. Serve nankhatai with tea or coffee.

Notes

You can replace wheat flour with maida.
Do not knead the dough very hardly as it will turn the cookies hard. Just bring the dough gently together for flaky nankhatai.
You can use butter instead of ghee. Make sure butter is soft at room temperature.
Do not bake nan khatai for more than 15 minutes. These cookies will not brown or turn hard on baking. After cooling for few minutes they become hard and very crispy.
These nankhatai keeps well for 15 days when stored airtight

Nutrition