Naan Khatai - Indian Shortbread Cookie

Naan-Khatai is a shortbread cookie popular in India and Pakistan. It supposedly originated from Surat,India.

Growing up Naan-khatai used to be our milk cookies; as mom never let me and my sister have tea, as long as we were students. Naan-khatai used to be the bribe for having milk. And mostly oven fresh. Sweet mom:)

Last night I was craving for oven fresh Naan-khatai but could not afford the original recipe, for obvious reasons. So played my gamble with a heavy heart. But the end result left me happily amazed.

Revised Orginal Recipe
1 cup whole wheat flour
2-3 Tbsp all purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup room temperature butter
2% milk as needed
cardamom powder as needed
finely chopped pistachios as needed

Mom's original recipe used all purpose flour, sugar, butter in 1:1:0.75 ratio. Love = Butter.....remember!! Gone are those days :(

Anyways, back to recipe. This is the simplest cookie recipe on earth I guess.

• Except cardamom, pistachios and milk - mix all the other items. Most important butter should be room temperature. 
• Now get a little dirty ;-) Use the warmth of your hands trying to make a dough. It will be tough on you with that less butter. So get few teaspoons of milk. Use just enough so you can make uniform soft rounds
• Sprinkle cardamom and pistachios on each
• Preheat oven to 350deg F, bake for around 20 min.

There are various versions of naan khatai available. But I like my mom's the best. No semolina, no besan (chick pea flour) makes the cookie just perfect. One just enough cookie crisp bite and it then melts in the mouth. 

Make it to believe. Happy cooking.