Chocolate Nan Khatai with a hint of coffee

One of my favourite Indian cookies/ biscuits as we call it is Nan Khatai and I simply love it right from childhood. Right when I started to bake I always did variations with the recipe by re-creating it with whole wheat flour, chocolate chips, nuts and this time around I wanted to give it a totally different feel make it with chocolate. But I could not imagine doing a chocolate nan khatai with cardamom hmmm sounded a bit weird to me, so wanted to use coffee instead. Coffee and chocolate are a winning combination and being someone who loves chocolate and coffee sure I was not ready to wait. Oh did you know I did try a cake with chocolate, coffee and almonds check it out HERE



Chocolate Nan Khatai are more of a crumbly, lightly crunchy cookies with a mild hint of ghee flavour, very unlike the original cardamom nan khatai's which have a melt-in-mouth texture. Do not add more than 1/3 'rd tsp of coffee it makes the cookies too strong and over-powering. If you are a coffee-hollic like me, may be these cookies are a great snack to skip coffee... sounds stupid right :P

Recipe Source ~ Own

Prep & Bake time ~ 20 mins

Makes ~ 12 medium sized cookies

Ingredients

Plain Flour - 1 cup minus 2 tbsp

Granulated white sugar - 1/2 cup

Instant coffee powder - 1/3 tsp (I used Nescafé gold)

Cocoa powder unsweetened - 1 and 1/2 tbsp ( I used Hershey's)

Melted Ghee - 1/2 cup

Method

• Pre-heat oven to 180 C/ 350 F. In a small-medium sized mixing bowl sieve the flour and set aside. Melt the butter and let it cool a bit and powder the sugar along with the instant coffee powder. Prepare a baking tray by lining it with parchment paper
• Mix the sugar coffee powder to the plain flour and mix well until well combined. To this add the ghee and mix until you care able to shape them into balls
• To get even sized cookies take the dough in a 1 tbsp size and roll them into balls and place them on the prepared tray and top it with cashew and flatten them slightly
• Place the prepared tray in the centre of the oven and bake for 10 mins, take them out and let it cool down completely

Cooks Wisdom

- I did not add salt since cocoa powder does have a hint of saltiness

- Adding more cocoa powder can made the cookies do a bit dry

- Do not use powdered sugar

- These cookies store great for upto a week in an air-tight container



Linking this recipe to Priya Suresh aks Valentine's Day Recipe Event