Orange Nankhatai
Orange Nankhatai is a zesty, lightly sweetened, crispy yet slightly tender, and beautifully orange-flavored Eggless Indian shortbread cookie.
Equipment
- Oven
- Mixing bowl
- sieve
- baking tray
- parchment paper
Ingredients
- 1 cup All-purpose flour
- ½ cup Besan/graham flour
- 2.5 tablespoon Semolina/sooji
- ½ cup Powdered/granulated white sugar
- ¼ teaspoon Salt
- 1 tablespoon Orange zest
- ½ cup Ghee/Clarified butter
- 2 teaspoon Chopped nuts For garnish, optional
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 320F.
- Line the baking tray with parchment paper.
- In a bowl sift together the 1 cup all-purpose flour, ½ cup besan, 2.5 tablespoons coarse sooji, and ¼ teaspoon salt.
- To this sifted flour mix add granulated sugar and whisk it all together.
- Add ½ cup room temperature ghee/clarified butter and 1 tablespoon orange zest and knead the mixture into a soft smooth dough.
- If the dough is dry then add a teaspoon of ghee at a time and keep kneading till you reach the right consistency with no cracks in the dough.
- Scoop the dough with a small cookie scoop or a tablespoon and roll small Orange Nankhatai dough balls.
- Place the rolled cookie balls on the pan lined with parchment paper with at least 1 inch space between each of them so they get room to expand and bake.
- Bake the nankhatai for 20-25 minutes or till the bottom are lightly browned.
- Get the pan out of oven an let the orange nankhatai cool down to room temperature in the pan itself. When you get the pan out of the oven it is still hot so the nankhatai will continue to cook from the bottom while cooling. Thus they will get perfect browning.
- Do not touch or lift the nankhatai when the are hot at they are soft and crumbly and will fall apart. Once they have cooled down they will harden and become nicely crisp and crunchy.
- Store the completely cooled down Orange Nankhatai in a airtight container in a cool place and they will stay good for a month.
Notes
- Always use room temperature ghee and not the completely melted one.
- Always sift all the dry ingredients
- Do not use water, milk or orange juice for kneading.
- Use more ghee 1 teaspoon at a time to knead if the dough is dry.
- After kneading the dough immediately roll them into balls to bake. If not the the dough might dry out and not yield good textured nankhatai.
- Add few drops of orange food color if you want to have colored nankhatai.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!