How to make biscuits (cookies)?

In India and UK, this baked good is called Biscuits. In United States they are called cookies

The primary ingredients of biscuits are: Flour, Eggs, Sugar, Fats, Liquids, Flavorings, Leavening agents, and Nuts

Typical Ingredients

The simplest form of cookie is shortbread cookie, or Nankhatai. Shortbread cookie has 3 parts of flour, 2 parts Butter and one part sugar. Pinch of salt is added. However, the typical recipe has other ingredients as well

Step1 Wet-Mixture Ingredients

1. Un-salted butter (two sticks): 1 cup

2. White sugar: ¾ cup

3. Egg Yolk: 1

4. Pure Almond extract: 1 teaspoon

5. Kewra essence: 6 drops

Step 2 Dry-mix Ingredients

5. All purpose flour: 2½ cups

6. Salt:

7. Baking Powder:

Step 4 Add-in Ingredients

8. Crushed Nuts: 1½ cup

Typical Process

Step 1 Prepare Wet Mixture

Creaming Fat (Ghee or Butter) and Sugar

1. Use Electric mixer. Beat Butter for about one minute

2. Gradually add sugars beating to a light and fluffy mixture, about 5 to 7 minutes. This incorporates tiny air bubbles in the dough

3. Add eggs and continue beating at low speed. The egg yolks help emulsify and hold moisture within the formed air cells and create a water and fat emulsion

4. Add milk or other liquids including liquid flavorings. Continue beating at low speed to form a smooth liquid

Step 2 Dry Mix

Mix Flour, Leavening agents such as baking powder and salt, and flavoring powders such as ground cardamom seeds. The leavening agents with liquid and heat make the tiny bubbles larger. Sift the ingredients together.

Step 3 Make Cookie Dough and incorporate add-ins

1. Gradually add dry mix to Wet mixture beating at low speed

2. Stir in nuts

Step 4 Baking

1. Preheat oven to specified temperature

2. Prepare Cookie sheet. You do not have to grease cookie sheet. Most of the times there is enough fat in the recipes. Line the cookie sheet with parchment paper. It serves two purposes: a) Makes cleaning the cookie sheet easier after baking, b) Parchment paper serves as an insulator to prevent the bottom of cookie to get over-browned

3. Depending on the type of biscuits, you may roll out and cut biscuits with cookie cutter, hand form into a ball and make patties, drop by Tablespoons.

4. Bake and remove from oven. Cool at room temperature

Role of Ingredients

Inter-play of Eggs flours fats and sugar

Proteins build the structure, Fats and Carbohydrates soften the structure. Therefore, flour and eggs build the basic structure, while Fats and Sugar soften the structure. If the dough has too much flour and eggs, it will lead to tough and dry biscuit. If the dough has too much fat and sugar, it may be so tender that the biscuits may not be able to even hold their shape.

Wheat Flours

Biscuits are normally made with Bleached All-purpose flour. Bleached flour has lower protein than unbleached flour. You can substitute part of All-Purpose flour with different flour to get different texture. Atta (bread flour) has more protein than Maida, it will absorb more moisture and make biscuit chewy. If you add, lower protein flour such as cake or pastry flour, the biscuit will be more tender. You can add partial gluten-free flours for other texture effects.

When moistened, the wheat flour forms long gluten strands. These gluten strands form the structure of the biscuit. Gluten has toughening effect. Fats shorten the gluten strands and make biscuits tender

Gluten Free Flours

Common gluten-free flours used in India are: Rice flour, Chickpea flour (Besan), Bajra (pearl millet) flour, Jowar (Sorghum) flour, Ragi (Finger millet) flour, and Kuttu (Buckwheat). You can mix wheat flour with Gluten-free flour for Gluten. For gluten-free recipes, you may use binding agent that would serve as a gluten replacement such as: Xanthan gum or guar gum.

Eggs

Egg whites are all protein, add to the structure but dry out baked biscuits. The egg yolk emulsifies the dough bringing fats and water together for smoother texture. The egg yolks make the structure smooth and velvety. In India, many vegetarians avoid eggs. One egg can be substituted with 3½ Tablespoons of whole milk If no egg yolk is added, the top surface of the cookie may appear crackled, and not smooth

Use eggs at room temperature before adding to creamed mixture. Submerge refrigerated eggs (still in shell) in a bowl of warm tap water for about 5 minutes before using.

Fats

You can use any fat that is solid at room temperature. Technically, these are called plastic fats, examples are: Ghee, Butter, Margarine, lard, Coconut, Vanaspati, Dalda, Vegetable shortening.

Vanaspati, Dalda, Vegetable shortening, and Margarine are hydrogenated trans-fats that should not be used for health reasons

Margarine does not hold the tiny bubbles in the creamed fat and sugar well.

You can not use oils that are liquid at room temperature.

If you plan to cream Fats and sugar, you will need at least 30% more fat than the sugar to totally cover sugar.

If you want to use less fat for health reason, divide sugar into two parts. Use one part with fat to cream, and add the remaining sugar as a part of dry ingredients.

Sugars

- You can not use liquid sweeteners such as Honey, Corn syrup, or Molasses to cream with fats. These items should be added as a part of liquid

The liquid sweeteners draw moisture from the atmosphere and make the biscuits soft and chewy.

- To cream fat and sugar, you can use any crystalline sugars, examples are: Granulated sugar, Superfine sugar, Ground sugar, Brown sugar, Shakkar (Crystalline Jaggery), Grated Jaggery.

Finer the sugar crystal, smaller are the tiny bubbles. Normally, ground crystalline sugar is used. It is available as 'powdered', 'confectioner's', or 10X sugar. White crystalline sugar also prevents cracking around the edges during baking. The cookies are crisp.

- Brown sugar, Shakkar (Crystalline Jaggery), and Grated Jaggery draw moisture from the atmosphere and make the biscuits soft and chewy

- In some recipes, you can use white crystalline sugar for creaming and add honey, syrups, brown sugar and Jaggery as a part of dried ingredients or after dried ingredients

- When the cookies dough starts to warm up, the fat layer of the tiny bubbles start to melt away allowing the sugar to be dissolved in water. As the sugar dissolves, it makes the cookie to spread out. Finer the sugar crystal, easier it dissolve and more it spreads out. A coarse granulated sugar produces less cookie spread. In some recipes you may want to use a mix of powdered sugar and granulated sugar.

Leavening Agents

- In the olden days, sap of Palm (Toddy) was used as a leavening agent in India. Nowadays, baking soda and/or baking powder are used. With moisture and heat, leavening agents release Carbon dioxide that gravitates to the tiny bubbles created during creaming, causing the tiny bubbles to get larger.

- Leavening agents are not necessary. Traditional Short bread cookies, and Northern Nankhatai do not use any leavening agent.

- If you add too much of leavening agent, the bubbles will get too big and rise to surface and pop.

- Do not exceed one teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour.

- Do not exceed ¼ teaspoon of baking soda per cup of flour.

- You may also add about ½ teaspoon of salt for each cup of flour, along with leavening agents to enhance flavor

- Baking soda and baking powder increase pH value of dough weakening the gluten and egg protein structure. With less structure the biscuit spreads more making porous crumb. Moisture from porous crumb evaporates easily making the biscuit crispier.

- Baking soda also increases browning. Too much of baking soda leaves a chemical flavor. Too much of soda will also make eggs in the cookie to turn grayish green

Flavoring Agents

In Western cookie baking, Vanilla extract is the most common flavoring agent. In Indian cookie baking Green Cardamom powder, Pure Almond extract, and Kewra Essence are common agents, In reality, there are several choices.

- Spices, such as: Cardamom, Cinnamon, Cloves, Nutmeg, and even black peppers. Cardamom is most popular

- Floral Essence or Waters, such as Kewra, Rose, Khas, and Sandalwood. I like to use Kewra essence

- Pure Almond extract

Liquids

Liquids are added in the form of eggs, milk, yogurt, water, syrups and honey. Liquids are essential, but too much of liquids will turn cookie dough into a pancake batter.

Add-ins: Dried fruits, Nuts and Seeds

All different types of nuts can be added, toasted, un-toasted, Coarse ground, Shaved, sliced. chopped

Common nuts used in Indian cookies are: Almonds, Pistachios, Chirongi, Pine-nuts (Chilgoza). In United states common nuts used are: walnuts and pecans. Peanuts and Coconuts are strong and used in special cookies.

Popular seeds are: Pumpkin, Watermelon, Cantaloupe, and Sesame.

Char Magaz is a popular combination of four nuts/seeds: Almonds Pumpkin, Watermelon, Cantaloupe

One of the most interesting item that can be added is Bajra (Millet) as seeds. Bajra gives the crunchiness.

Popular dried fruits are raisins dates and apricots.

How to make low fat Cookies?

There really is no good substitute for butter or Ghee. The vegetable shortenings are transfats and more harmful than the saturated fats in butter or Ghee. Let us assume that you can live with reduced butter, then what to do with the rest of the recipe. You will have to divide the sugar and use it differently. Let us assume that you reduced the butter into half, you must divide sugar in two halves. Use one half of sugar with the butter to cream and incorporate air, mix the remaining half of the sugar with flour mix and add when the flour is added in the process. You have to maintain appropriate Butter Sugar ratio during creaming process.

What makes the cookies to spread?

1. Finer the sugar crystal size used in creaming with butter, more is the spread of the cookie. Ground sugar used in creaming will produce larger spread than the granular table sugar. However, the commercial powdered sugar or confectioner's sugar also contains corn starch that prevents the spread

2. Optimum spread is obtained with white granulated sugar. Mixing with fructose sugars, brown sugar or jaggery will increase the spread

3. Baking soda increases the pH value of the cookie dough. Higher the pH value of the cookie dough, larger is th spread.

4. Optimum spread is obtained with plastic fat with more than 80% fat content. Lower-fat spreads have higher moisture and increase the spread size. Never use a low-fat spread with less than 60% fat

5. Optimum spread is achieved with all-purpose flour. High protein flours (bread flour) will increase spread, lower protein flour such as cake flour will reduce the spread.

6. Optimum spread is achieved with un-bleached flour. Bleached or chlorinated flours will reduce the spread

Baking or Cookies sheets

1. Choose cookie sheets with little or no edges, it allows biscuits to bake quickly and evenly

2.. Cookie sheet should be at the room temperature when the cookies are placed on it.

3. Normally, there is no need to grease the cookie sheet due to high amount of fat in the dough. If needed, use butter, Ghee, or Vegetable shortening to grease the sheet. After greasing the cookie sheet should be lightly dust it with flour. Flouring limits the biscuit to spread out. Using oil to grease the baking sheet may cause the underside of biscuits to burn

4. Use parchment paper for un-greased cookie pan. Makes clean-up easy. Don't use wax paper, it start to smoke at 350º F.

5. Leave about 1½" to 2" space in-between biscuits to allow for the spread.

Recipes

Batasa (Butter Biscuit)

Besan Cookies

Nankhatai

Nankhatai Old fashioned

Plain tea-biscuits

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