Nankhatai – Indian Eggless Biscuits

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Nankhatai is the eggless Indian style biscuits served mostly at the tea time. These are very popular even in the tea shops across north India. According to Wikipedia, Nankhatai is derived from the Persian word Naan, which is shortbread and khatai which means biscuits. In Afghanistan, these are also called as Kulcha-e-khataye where in kulcha again means shortbread.

Types of Nankhatai:

Nankhatai is a type of eggless cookies. In most of the cookie recipes, we know that we will be using butter as the fat. But, here in Nankhatai, we will be using our desi ghee or clarified butter. Typical the melt in the mouth Nankhatai which is commercially sold uses Vanaspati or Dalda. But ghee is the best and the healthy substitute to recreate these Indian style eggless biscuits at home.

Again, there are many recipes for this Indian style eggless biscuits. For the bakery-style of these eggless biscuits, we will use a portion of gram flour while for these Nankhatai we use only the All-purpose flour. Some recipes use both baking soda and baking powder while there are some which do not use any of these. Likewise, there are many flavours of these nankahhatai such as the Pista Nankhatai, Saffron flavoured nankhatai and choco-chip nankhatai. Check out these and bake these very easy and melt in the mouth nankhtai.

Preparation of Indian styled eggless biscuits

These eggless biscuits are incredibly easy to prepare and bake. All we will need is the all-purpose flour, semolina, baking soda, ghee and sugar with a hint of cardamom.

The first step is so to measure the ghee and refrigerate it for 15 minutes. Mix the flour, semolina, baking soda and together and keep aside. Next, cream the powdered sugar and the ghee till creamy. Mix in the flour mix with the cardamom powder and knead it for a minute till the dough comes together.  Let this dough rest for 10-15 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 190 C. Bake these eggless biscuits for 15 minutes. The biscuits will start to brown by this time. Transfer it to a cooling rack. After 10 minutes, remove these Indian style eggless biscuits from the tray and let out cool completely. Congratulations!! You have baked the best nankhatai.