Kesar Nankhatai |Saffron Recipes – Recipe for Saffron flavoured Nankhatai, Indian shortbread cookie
Diwali is just round the corner. Which means it’s the roll-up-your-sleeves and get-down-to-cleaning time of the year. It is also the time to plan the parties and the menus, and the special things to cook for this festive season.
A couple of weeks ago, I had this fantastic opportunity to create festive recipes for a Saffron brand – Kesari. It brought me much joy to create recipes using my favourite spice, and my kitchen was suffused with the aroma of saffron.
While these recipes were for their e-booklet, they are okay with me sharing it on my blog too, so that my readers can prepare these recipes for Diwali this year 🙂 I shall share the link to the e-booklet that you can download once it is up on their website.
This is a series of 8 saffron recipes, and all of them are perfectly apt for Diwali. And if you know me well, they are all quick and easy to prepare, with no laundry list of ingredients involved.
First in the series is a special Kesar Nankhatai. While I’ve already blogged a recipe for Nankhatai last year, this one is all the more festive due to the addition of saffron. I have used pure saffron powder, but you can replace it with a few strands of saffron toasted on a very gentle heat and powdered using a tiny mortar-pestle. The warm, rich aroma of saffron in these cookies is the highlight of this melt in the mouth Nankhatai.
Kesar Nankhatai
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups maida
- 2 tbsp besan
- 1 tbsp rava [chiroti]
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup ghee
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 sachet saffron powder 0.1 gram Kesari saffron sachet
For garnish:
- 10 - 12 pistachios
- few strands saffron (optional)
Instructions
- Sieve the maida, besan, rava, baking soda and keep aside.
- In a bowl, mix together the ghee, sugar and saffron powder until well combined. To this add the dry ingredients and gently combine until you get a smooth dough.
- Pinch off 30 portions from this dough. Roll each portion between palms to get a smooth ball.
- Flatten this ball slightly and place on a baking sheet. Keep some distance ~ 2cm between the cookies as they will expand as they bake.
- Preheat oven at 180°C.
- Meanwhile, roughly chop the pistachios and press a pinch of chopped nuts over each cookie.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Cookies will harden further on cooling.
- Remove, cool and pack in airtight container. Garnish with a strand of saffron before serving if desired.
More Easy Saffron Recipes:
Saffron Rice with Fruits and Nuts
Kesari Bhapa Doi | Steamed Saffron Yogurt with just 4 Ingredients
Badam Kesar Kheer with Pumpkin | Recipe for Almond Saffron Pudding
Easy Kesar Burfi with Milk Powder
Kesar Nankhatai
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups maida
- 2 tbsp besan
- 1 tbsp rava [chiroti]
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup ghee
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
- 1 sachet saffron powder 0.1 gram Kesari saffron sachet
For garnish:
- 10 - 12 pistachios
- few strands saffron (optional)
Instructions
- Sieve the maida, besan, rava, baking soda and keep aside.
- In a bowl, mix together the ghee, sugar and saffron powder until well combined. To this add the dry ingredients and gently combine until you get a smooth dough.
- Pinch off 30 portions from this dough. Roll each portion between palms to get a smooth ball.
- Flatten this ball slightly and place on a baking sheet. Keep some distance ~ 2cm between the cookies as they will expand as they bake.
- Preheat oven at 180°C.
- Meanwhile, roughly chop the pistachios and press a pinch of chopped nuts over each cookie.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes. Cookies will harden further on cooling.
- Remove, cool and pack in airtight container. Garnish with a strand of saffron before serving if desired.
For healthy vegetarian recipes, check out my book The Everyday Healthy Vegetarian. Get all the info about my book and order it here.
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These look so nice and yummy.
These look so nice and yummy. The flavors seem so rich. I am sure they are really good. Can I ask a question: what is chiroti rava?
The finer version of rava 🙂 @Pamela – thank you!
Hello,
Could you let us know how much amount of ghee, baking soda and sugar needs to be added ? (I guess there is bug in the blog the numbers are not displayingI
Thank you
it has been corrected now.