Nankhatai/Wheat Nan Khatai/Indian Nankattai

Nankhatai is butter Indian shortbread cookies have their important place in most of the Diwali sweet list. These cute cookies makes an excellent buttery snacks as well, its quite easy to make and obviously super dangerously addictive. So many versions exists, some goes for all purpose flour, while other makes with a combination of gram flour and all purpose flour and some makes these cookies with wheat flour. The word Nankhatai is from Persian word Nan meaning bread and Khatai from an Afghan word meaning biscuit.Traditional Nankhatai was made with gram flour and maida, the most important flour mixture which is now can be replaced with wheat flour, some add semolina to make this cookies aka biscuits more crunchy.

This Indian cookies are definitely eggless and super buttery as the dough is prepared simply with either softened butter or ghee, no water is added hence these cookies will definitely melt in mouth. I baked few nankhatais before diwali as we are supposed to bake Diwali bakes for this month's  Home Baker's Challenge, a monthly baking event hosted this month by Mayuri Patel of Mayuri's Jikoni, She suggested us different Diwali friendly bakes for this event. I couldnt resist to make these Nankhatai she picked from Rak's Kitchen, trust me this wholewheat nankhatai turned out extremely awesome and we loved it to the core. Since this cookies can be enjoyed prefectly for evening snacks, these cookies are going to this week's blogging marathon as i picked Evening snacks as theme.Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM#58.

3/4cup Wheat flour/ Atta
1/4cup Maida/ All purpose flour
1/2cup Sugar
1/2cup Ghee (melted )
1no Cardamom seeds
1 pinch Baking powder
10nos Pistachios (for decoration)

Blend the sugar, cardamom seed as a fine powder.

Transfer to a mixing bowl, and add the flours and baking powder to it.

In the same mixer, coarsely grind the pistachios, keep aside for the decoration.

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Add ghee slowly to the flour mixture and mix them until to form the dough, take care not to add all ghee in one go, you may not need all the ghee, you can keep a tablespoon of ghee away.

Strictly dont use water to knead the dough.

Line a baking sheet in a baking tray and keep aside.

Make small sized balls from the dough. Flatten them slightly.

Make a criss-cross pattern on the top middle of the cookie with a knife.

Drop a pinch of powdered pistachios over each cut.

Bake them  for 12 to 15 minutes,take care while baking, once the sides starts golden in colour, switch off the oven.

Cool in wire rack completely and store them in an airtight container.