Happy New Year 2013

Wishing my Readers a Healthy and Prosperous New Year 2013.

Hope everyone is back to the grind. We had a wonderful Holiday time.
For the school winter break, my kid has to write a journal about what he ate over the holidays. Usually, I don't prepare any special meal for Christmas. He wished for baked turkey, being a mediocre meat eaters, I opted for smaller bird chicken! We both set an Indo-Italian menu: baked whole tandoori chicken, lasagna and some garlic bread, for dessert Christmas fruit cake and cardamom cookies. We couldn't finish the chicken just imagine if it was turkey, I could have stocked my freezer for the whole year with only turkey meat. The leftover turned out into a delicious meal next day. Overall we enjoyed the Christmas meal.
These Cardamom cookies were published in my local news edition during the festive season. These cookies stand-alone just with one spice Cardamom.Very popular eggless cookies in India till now never tried. I was much interested with rice flour in baking ingredients.The only changed I made is topped with pistachios just to give the Festive look as I chopped too tiny they almost got burned and kept few minutes the dough in fridge to avoid flat cookies. They are crispy and perfect sweetness which pair well with the cardamom. Within a week, I baked twice to share with friends.

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Recipe source: Cardamon Nan khatai

Yield: 29 cookies

Ingredients  3/4 cup of unsalted butter at room temperature 1 cup of powder sugar 1  1/4 cup of all purpose flour 1/2 cup of white rice flour 1/4 of ground almond (i used blanched almond) 1 tsp of ground cardamom (approx 12 pods) 1/4 salt Nuts (optional): 2 tbsp of pistachios chopped Method Preheat the oven to 350 Degrees. User a hand mixer or whisk, in a bowl  beat the butter and sugar until fluffy. Stir the flours, salt, ground almond and cardamom together and add to the creamed butter sugar mixture. Form a smooth dough . I kept in the fridge for 15 min not recommended by the author. Take a pinch of dough or use a tablespoon for uniform cookies. Roll in between the palm and flatten slightly in middle. Top with nuts if you are using. Place in cookie sheets (need two) , give at least 2 inches space to spread.  Bake in the middle of oven until the edge are lightly brown. It takes 15 to 18 minutes. Once baked cool on a wire rack and store in airtight container. Author note: Depending how u measure the dry ingredients -you may need a couple of tbsp of butter. I didn't face any problem to form the dough -baked twice . The dough slightly melt in between your palms and form easily a round without crack cookies.