The first thing I ever attempted baking were cookies. Not veggies or frozen food but cookies, nankhatai specifically. And surprisingly for a first attempt, they turned out amazingly well! Over the years, I have a built a collection of a few trusted recipes I can fall back to when I want to bake cookies. Mostly I have used all purpose flour/maida. Baking with whole wheat flour has been a recent thing for me. After a few attempts, I have figured a recipe that produces really lovely short bread kind of cookies with whole wheat flour.

Today I am presenting whole wheat cookies using coconut oil and flavored with cardamom. I previously used only butter or ghee to make cookies. I used coconut oil to see if the cookies would have the texture I was looking for while tasting tropical and coconut-ty, and these turned out to taste even better than I expected. Seriously! And bonus, the lovely aroma lingers around the kitchen for fairly long and I cannot get enough of that!

To make these cookies, a few tips:

• The coconut oil should be in soft semi-solid state. Use only powdered sugar. Only then will creaming these two ingredients be possible. One thing to keep in mind is that coconut oil would not cream up as fluffy as butter does. But it does turn white and forms a light homogenous mixture.
• I know most other recipes state this, but once the flour is added, combine only until the entire dough comes together. If you are able to barely form a ball of it, that is all you are looking for. This is the most important step for a short bread texture. So do not add all the liquid is one go, your flour may require more or less than stated in the recipe
• Chill the cookies in the fridge for about 10 minutes at least. The cookies tend to spread less in the oven then.
• The cookies are done once the sides turn light brown. Once the cookies are out of the oven and cooled, they crisp up.
• This recipe is easily scalable. So if you are looking to make a bigger batch, just scale it up!

Now I hope you are as excited as I am to bake these cookies, so let’s get to the recipe!

Ingredients

• Whole wheat flour – 3/4 cup
• Powdered sugar – 1/4 cup
• Coconut oil – 1/4 cup
• Cardamom powder – 3/4 tsp
• Baking powder – 1/4 tsp
• Baking soda – 1/8 tsp
• Salt – 2 pinches
• Cold milk – 2-3 tbsp

Time taken – 30 minutes in total, Yields – about 16 small cookies

Recipe

• Preheat the oven to 170 C or 340 F.
• Line a baking tray or two with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
• In a bowl, add in the coconut oil and powdered sugar. Whisk it up well. It turns fairly fluffy in about 2-3 minutes
• Now add in the dry ingredients – whole wheat flour, cardamom powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Give it all a stir.
• Add in the milk 1 tablespoon at a time and try to bring the mixture together. Once the mixture comes into a ball more or less, you’re done.
• Scoop out about a tablespoon of this dough and form a round between your palms. Flatten to a disc about 2 inches in diameter
• Place these on the baking sheet with some gap amongst them to allow for expansion

• Put these in the fridge for about 10 minutes to chill
• After 10 minutes, pop them into the oven and bake for about 10-12 minutes, until the sides turn light brown (a lovely aroma of coconut and cardamom powder wafts around the kitchen as these bake)

• Once done, take the baking sheets out of the oven and leave them out for about 5 minutes
• Then remove these to a cooling rack to come to room temperature. These tend to crisp up as they cool.
• Store them in an airtight container and relish these! They may be gone sooner than you realize! 🙂

We love them, I hope you love them too!

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