December 21, 2019

Pumpkin Nankhatai – Soft Pumpkin Cookies

In the last 5 years Birmingham is the first town in which Maddy and I have settled in for more than a year. With that kind of stability we made a few more friends than we are used to. (CHUCKLES!!). The moment these friends realize you are a decent cook then you are pretty much toast. It means you are cooking and entertaining pretty much every week. On the flip-side I have a bunch of guinea pigs for testing my new recipes like this baked “Pumpkin Nankhatai – Soft Pumpkin Cookies”. It is a twist on the traditional nankhatai commonly found in India.

Let me clarify that the Birmingham I mentioned is not the one that a majority of y’all are familiar with i.e. the one in the UK. The city I am talking about is actually in the good ol US of A. Surprisingly for such a small city it’s got a lot of Indians which means we have a decent number of friends. The problem as I mentioned above is that a lot of them know I can cook a decent meal. So I need to come up with a something new most of the time. The taco party I had for lunch one day was a hit and so was the idea for a chaat party.

HOW TO MAKE PUMPKIN COOKIES FROM SCRATCH.

This time when we invited over a friend and her daughter I decided to do something that I haven’t done before and that is BAKE. For some odd reason that I can’t fathom I had a can of pumpkin puree in my fridge. That gave me the inspiration for a dessert recipe. But the question was which one??? I started going through the usual suspects i.e. carrot pudding, gulab jamun, rasmalai etc trying to think of some way or the other to give these recipes a twist. But it was of no use.

Then it hit me. Pumpkin goes well in cookies so the recipe that I tweaked is an Indian style cookie called the nankhatai. Traditionally this nankhatai is a little harder in consistency than normal and served with your evening cup of joe. I honestly had no idea how the addition of pumpkin puree was going to turn out but I did it anyway.

DO I USE FRESH PUMPKIN PUREE OR CANNED.

I used canned Pumpkin Puree but fresh pumpkin is always an option. The fresh pumpkin puree will have more liquid, so make sure to strain the pumpkin puree in a fine mesh strainer. Do check my Pumpkin Chickpea Curry as I have mentioned step by step instructions to make a pumpkin puree in it.

Next, I simply mixed all the ingredients together. The dough actually turned out to be a little soft. So I let it chill in the refrigerator for a half-hour. After baking the final product surprised me a little. The nankhatai is softer compared to the traditional one. I suspect the culprit for that is the high amount of liquid in the recipe. The end result would have been different if I had just used pumpkin spice instead.

SPICED PUMPKIN COOKIES/NANKHATAI

But the good thing was that the flavors were fantastic. The concentrated pumpkin puree meant the pumpkin flavor permeated throughout the cookie making it the ultimate star of the dish. I added a touch of cinnamon to give it an earthy flavor and ghee to give it an Indianness (dunno if that’s a word but y’all get the point) to the recipe.

I liked the way the recipe turned out but y’all can manipulate it according to your tastes…These Soft Pumpkin Cookies are my new fall favorite recipe.

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