Thursday, December 31, 2009

Saffron Cookies

Saffron plays an important role in the Indian and Middle Eastern and mediterranean cuisine.There are authentic saffron recipes including cakes and cookies from several middle eastern countries apart from the stove top sweet Indian dishes.I have made simple saffron cookies using the recipe I found in Tarla Dalal's site.Another good or intriguing feature of this recipe is the use of ghee instead of butter/margarine for creaming.

Ingredients:
All Purpose Flour: 1/2 cup OR 8 tbsp

Ghee: 3.5 tbsp
Sugar: 3 tbsp

Saffron threads: 1/4-1/2 tsp
Warm Milk: 1 tsp

Preparation:
Cream together ghee and sugar till thoroughly blended.Soak saffron threads in warm milk and mix well till the milk looks yellow.Add in flour to the creamed sugar and ghee mix and knead to form a crumbly dough adding only the saffron milk.

Pinch tablespoonfuls of dough,shape into rounds,and slightly flatten it and put on a lined but non greased baking sheet.I added almonds on top of some cookies,and added designs on few with the help of fork and remaining I left alone.Totally there were 9 cookies.

Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for 10-15 minutes till the edges start browning and the bottoms are already brown.Take out and let them cool completely.You may feel that the centre is soft but upon cooling it turns hard.

I allowed them to cool completely on the baking sheet itself which made them a little crunchy.Also while baking you can see the cookies expanding a little and turning flaky.I suppose its because of the use of ghee.As for the taste,it feels like we are biting into an Indian sweet laden with ghee or rather baked Mysorepak made from flour instead of besan!!.

Well the cookies are onway to JFI-Saffron,an event by Indira of Mahanandi and currently hosted by DK of ChefInYou.

10 Comments:

Tina said...

Yummy Yummy cookies.....Fabulous dear. Happy new year....

Priya Suresh said...

Such a rich cookies, looks fantastic..

Happy 2010 CL!!

Red Chillies said...

Looks so pretty.

Warm wishes for a Happy New Year to you and your family Sweatha.

indhu said...

I like it that you post recipes which make small amount of cookies.. Half the time, I am wondering how to cut down the ingredient amounts and I always end up messing something... this is nice and easy to follow :)

- Indhu(www.thayirsaadham.com)

Cham said...

Good one with unusual spice! Wishing u a very Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

saffron in a cookie..wow!!

Usha said...

Cookies look fantastic ! A very Happy New Year to you and your family!

Shwetha said...

I love using saffron in new and exciting ways. These look gorgeous!

Aparna Balasubramanian said...

They must be tasting heavenly. Love the taste of ghee in cookies. :)

A very Happy New Year to you, rather belated though.

Unknown said...

Cookies look pretty! Love the addition of saffron!

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