Nan Kithai from The Spice Club

The Spice Club cooks Nan Kithai – Indian Cardamom Butter Cookies

It’s mighty cold outside and as your hands hug a hot cup of tea, you need to embrace these Indian cardamom cookies too. Sweet and buttery and flavoured with crushed cardamom, Nan Kithai are deliciously comforting and make a perfect accompaniment at tea-time or as a post-dinner sweet treat.

Nan Kithai

Makes approx 30

What we need:

1/2 cup butter (at room temperature)
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup plain flour
1/3 cup semolina
1/2 cup gram flour
Pinch of baking soda
1/4 tsp cardamom powder
Sliced almonds to garnish

How to:

• Place sugar, butter and oil in a bowl and cream together.
• In a separate bowl, add semolina, gram flour, plain flour, baking soda and cardamom powder together and mix well.
• Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter, oil and sugar.
• Bind together until a soft dough is formed.
• Divide into 30 portions and shape them into balls
• Put a little indentation into the middle of each portion, add a slice of almond to each and place on lined baking tray.
• Bake in oven at 150C for five minutes. Turn the baking tray around and cook for another five minutes.
• They should be a very slight golden colour. Remove tray from oven and allow to cool before touching them -they’re very crumby when hot.
• You’re done. Enjoy!

Manchester food-entrepreneur Monica Sawhney founded the city’s celebrated Spice Club in 2010, a series of exclusive supper clubs and pop-up dining events showcasing her gourmet take on classic home-cooked Indian food. Monica combines her passion for food and teaching in her Indian cookery classes to enable her passionate protégés to learn the skills and tricks to produce Indian food the way it should be – home-cooked and delicious!