Whole wheat Butter Cookies/Benne biscuits

Whole Wheat Butter cookies / Benne biscuits

Benne biscuit is the simplest cookie recipe and I can say it is a beginners recipe.After many attempts and failures with benne biscuits I found this recipe ,which uses very few ingredients .This  is  a super hit recipe with my family and friends.Being whole wheat it is healthier and tastier as well. My kids love these cookies.I have baked it so many times and the recipe has never failed.
Here goes the recipe

Ingredients:

Whole wheat flour- 1 cup
 Icing sugar- 1/2 cup ( Or just powdered sugar if you dont have icing sugar)
Unsalted Butter-1/2 cup or 100 grams at room temperature
baking powder-1/4th tsp
Cardamom powder- 1/4th  tsp

Procedure:
Sieve the whole wheat flour and baking powder once.Add cardamom powder to it and mix well.
Grease and line a baking tray or a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.Preheat the oven at 150 degrees. In a large mixing bowl take the butter . It should be very soft.Beat the butter with a wire whisk until fluffy.Add icing sugar to this and beat or mix it until well incorporated .

Add the dry flour mixture to this in parts (add a little and mix well, then add little more and mix until incorporated ) I usually do this in three parts. The dough will be of chapathi dough consistency , but will be little crumbly. If you try to hold the dough and shape it into a ball it should hold the shape.Let the dough rest for 10 to 15 mins.

After 10 mins shape them(refer foot note) into  desired shape or  just flatten into a disc  and place them on the lined baking tray allowing some space between cookies ,as they rise a bit when baked.Bake them at 150 degrees for 15 to 20 mins or until the edges start browning.Cool on wire rack and store in air tight container.

Note for beginners:

1.  To shape the cookies  just take a part of the dough and roll it to desired thickness on a flat surface with a rolling pin  , use cookie cutters and with the back of a knife lift the shaped cookie and place on baking tray,be very careful while doing this as it tends to break.

2.Baking time might vary depending on the size of the cookie so keep checking the oven and take them out once the edges start browning.Also you can try a test batch to find the baking time.

Variations:

1.Using Icing sugar gives very light texture to the cookies.I have tried baking with normal powdered sugar as well.The texture was pretty good

2.You can use maida in place of whole wheat flour, but the amount of butter required will be  little less as the dough needs to be little crumbly to get the exact bakery benne biscuit texture.With this amount of butter it becomes a soft dough and it does not hold shape.The cookies tasted very good though.The cooking time was also little longer for these cookies.

Will put the exact quantity of butter and baking time for maida benne bisciuts in my fore coming post.

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