Recently I discovered magic and power of library system here. The minute I stepped into library I knew I am going to pick lot of books and variety of topics. I must have spent more than 5 hours that week just browsing through books and selecting what all I like. I got this book on the desserts and it had this recipe. First time I made, I tried word to word with few changes in ingredients but this time I changed the proportion of butter, maida as well. I loved how nice and crispy it turned out. We are now set for atleast a week of 4pm snacks :)


Ingredients
3/4 Cup Butter
2.25 Cup Sugar
6.25 Cup Maida
2 Spoon Baking Powder
2 Lemon's Zest
4 Eggs
1 Cup Almonds
1 Cup Pistachios
1 Cup Craisins
2 Spoon Fennel Seeds
1 Spoon Salt

Method

• Preheat oven to 350F/175C.
• Beat butter and sugar together until combined, about a minute.
• Add in Maida, baking powder, salt and lemon zest and beat again till mixed well.
• Add in one egg at a time and beat till mixed well.
• Add in chopped almonds, pistachios, craisins and saunf and again mix well.
• Dust the flat surface with little bit of maida and pull out the mixture and knead and shape it into two 12 inch logs that are just over 1 inch in height.
• Line a baking pan with the parchment paper and transfer the logs into it.
• Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. Pull the logs out of oven and let them cool down for around 10 minutes
• Using sharp knife, slice the log diagonally around 1/2 inch thick slice.
• Transfer the logs into pan with cut side facing up, bake at 350F for another 25 minutes.
• Let the biscotti cool and then transfer into the container.

Notes
I used almonds, pistachio and craisins but really you can use any nuts and dry fruits. In fact this time I forgot to add saunf but last time I made this, I had added it and it gave nice taste and everyone loved it :)
I used my kitchenaid standing mixer to beat in everything, as it was much easier that way than the hand mixer. But if you don't have it, you can use hand mixer too.

I made this for taking with us to trip tomorrow for memorial day weekend. Perfect snacks for travel. Its inspired by the short bread Ajoy got from Costco couple of times.


Ingredients
3 Cup Maida
2 Cup Butter
1.25 Cup Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
2 Spoon Vanilla Essence
1/2 Cup Cashews
1/2 Cup Pistachios
1 Cup Semi-sweet Choco Chips
1/4 Cup White Choco Chips
5 Spoon Shortening

Method

• In a bowl cream butter and sugar together till fluffy.
• Add in egg yolk and vanilla essence and cream again
• Grind the cashews to fine powder and add it to the above mixture
• Sift in maida and mix together till nice stiff dough is formed.
• Form the lemon sized balls and store them in fridge for around 1 hour
• Preheat oven to 375F/190C
• Chop the pistachios
• Press each dough ball using palms to thick discs. Sprinkle the pistachios on half portion of each cookie disc and press lightly to secure the pistachios in the cookie
• Line the baking sheet with parchment paper and grease it. Transfer the discs on to the baking pan keeping an inch of distance between each of them
• Bake at 375F/190C for 12 minutes
• Let the cookies cool for 5-10 minutes.
• In a bowl mix in semi sweet chocochips and 4 spoon of shortening and microwave for 1 minutes stirring once after 30 minutes. Mix till nice glossy.
• Line the baking sheet with fresh parchment paper. Dip each cookie's part which isn't covered by pistachios in the chocolate and set it on parchment paper.
• Mix white choco chips and remaining 1 spoon of shortening for 30 seconds and stir in till smooth and glossy. Fill it in a piping bag and make zig zag lines over the semi sweet chocolate on the cookie. Let the chocolate set for an hour.

Notes
If you dont have microwave you can heat chocolate and shortening in a bowl set over the boiling water. Stir till the mixture is smooth and dont let the chocolate burn. Microwave is really easy method and one doesnt need to worry much except to check it every 30 seconds so I prefer to temper the chocolate in microwave.

We had this for the first time at sush's place when Tejal had gone to work and we three were looking out for something interesting to eat. Ajoy had liked it instantly. I had wondered that it might be easy to make it using puff pastry sheet then. We came to know that costco here doesnt bake these, so I got all the more reason to make them at home. I quickly confirmed my theory and baked them today.


Ingredients
1 Puff Pastry Sheet
1 Cup Sugar
Butter

Method

• Unfold the puff pastry on a sugar dusted kitchen top.
• Sprinkle sugar on top of the pastry sheet. Roll it lightly till the sugar sticks to the pastry sheet
• Fold both sides of the pastry sheet till mid ways and then fold it in middle.
• Keep it in refrigerater for 30-40 minutes
• Preheat oven to 400F/200C, grease the baking tawas
• Cut the pastry sheets into smaller slices if the rolled pastry perpendicular to folds.
• Dip each slice's cut sides into the sugar and arrange it on baking tawa with cut side facing up.
• Bake in oven over 400F/200C for 18 minutes and then take it out.

Notes
Thaw the puff pastry sheet for 35-40 minutes but not more because otherwise it might become unmanageable.
I wanted to put the parchment paper on the tawas so that my tawas dont get messy after taking out the palmiers but i didn't have one. But using it would be better on tawas i think.

Earlier when I had tried preparing cookies it had turned out great but then instead of 10 small cookies it turned out into 1 large pizza size cookie. So today when I got it right, I am posting it here.


Ingredients
1 cup Butter
3/4 cup Sugar
3/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 Egg
2.5 Cup Maida
3/4 spoon Baking Powder
1/4 Spoon Salt
200gm Cadboury

Method

• Mix butter, sugar, brown sugar and egg well
• Sieve Maida, Baking powder and salt couple of times to get uniformly mixed flour
• Add this flour couple of spoons at a time in the butter-egg mixture to form stiff batter
• Chop the cadboury into small pieces and mix it in the batter
• Preheat oven to 250C.
• Grease the tawa with butter and put the round shaped cookies from the batter onto it. Spread them around 2 inches apart
• Bake for 10 minutes at 250C
• Let the cookies cool down and then store in air tight container

Notes
The cookies spread little while baking so maintaining 2 inches distance between them is must. Otherwise, they will get mixed into each other.
Brown sugar gives the cookie light brown colour.