Chocolate Nankhatai

Recipe Contributed by: Smruti Vartak, Iowa, USA 

We grew up in India cherishing Nankhatais/Cookies. But we used to have plain version of these. When my friend Smruti shared picture of chocolate swirl Nankhatais on Facebook I requested her to share the recipe on our blog, and she agreed. This recipe is originally from the blog Treat a Week.

Recipe from: Treat a Week
Serves: 24

Prep time: 15 min Cook time: 20 min

Ingredients:

1 cup Unsalted Butter (2 sticks), at room temperature
3/4 cup White Sugar
2.5 cups Unbleached All Purpose Flour
1/3 cup Semolina
1 teaspoons Baking Powder
1 tablespoons Cocoa

1-2 tablespoons Milk

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 300 F. Grease or line baking sheet with parchment paper.

2) Mix together flour, semolina and baking powder. Set aside.

3) In another bowl, beat butter and sugar until the mixture is fluffy. Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture. Knead for some time. Add milk if the dough feels very dry.

4) Take 1/4 of the dough in a small bowl and add cocoa. Knead it for some time to incorporate the cocoa powder in the dough.

5) Divide rest of white dough into 6 equal portions and dough with chocolate into 2 portions. Take 3 portions of white dough and 1 portion of chocolate dough and roll all the pieces into tubes( thick strings) of same length.

6) Now roughly braid the tubes and cut it into 12-14 equal pieces. Roll them individually in your hands until the dough swirls (like you are making laddoos). Flatten them a little before placing them on baking sheet. The flatten discs should be thicker in the middle than at edges.

7) I would like to add here that I have also made NanKhatai in the past with similar recipe and tried braiding technique which didn't work for me. So instead, I followed the other technique. With these tubes, cut a length of white dough string and cut almost half of its length the chocolate dough. Place the dough strings side by side and start rolling with chocolate dough inwards. The result will look like pinwheel. Then just gently turn in smooth flat rounds as described in above step. Repeat the process with others.(Optional technique added by Dhara Balwa) 

8) Bake for 20-22 minutes at 300 F, until you see a hint of color. Lift up one of the cookies and check the base. If it has light brown color and the top is very light shade of brown, they are done. Note: Don't wait for them to be crisp up in oven. After they cool, the Nankhatais will harden a bit. They will become golden brown and crisp instead of soft and buttery if they are over baked.

For the traditional Nankatais, skip chocolate and add 2 teaspoons of cardamom powder to the dough.  You can decorate them with cashews, almonds or pistachios if you want. Gently press the nut in the middle of cookies before baking.