Cheddar Bikkis

Ever since my dad moved in with us I have had to make a lot of changes in the way I cook and what I cook. From en croute to papilottes ...I have had to even make desserts that are easy on the sweet yet high on flavour, which means less of chocolate mousses and more of fresh mascarpone Tiramisu's. This change has changed the way I bake too. Since he is not too fond of large gooey chocolate cookies and decadent cream cheese and fudge cupcakes I have started making sour cream and zucchini muffins, carrot cupcakes and more recently savoury cookies. Mainly because every time I make biscuits or cookies, he would gingerly ask me "isn't there anything salty you can do?"...eventually I made myself get the message and began looking around for nice savoury cookie recipes. There was my mom's 'nan khatai' but he found that a tad heavy, then I tried Zeera biscuits which he found too dry, so I finally made a bargain with him. I said "we can do yummy and fairly healthy but we can't do both" (and I secretly believe no one can!!). So the healthy part of this recipe comes from the fact that all the ingredients are fresh and so are the cookies. Frankly if you delve deep enough then the wheat in the flour in store bought cookies was probably harvested ages ago, which in my opinion ages the entire product. The not so healthy part comes from the 'cheddar' but if you can control yourself and enjoy just a few of these at a time, then they are the freshest, yummiest option compared to store bought biscuits.

Ingredients:

250 gms flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp granulated sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1.5 tsp salt

80 gms cold butter, cubed

100 gms shredded extra-old cheddar cheese

2 tbsp dried chives (I use Keya)

 125 ml buttermilk (use sparingly to bring the dough together, so don’t dump all of it in at one go)

Mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, baking soda and salt which a whisk so it incorporates well. Use your finger tips to knead in the butter until mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Mash in the cheese and chives then add the buttermilk to form soft dough. You can use a spatula to bring it all together but use your hands to make the dough, it makes all the difference. Knead for few minutes to break up all the gluten.

Lightly flour the surface you plan to roll the dough on. Roll out into a ½ inch thick round. Using a round or flowered cookie cutter and cut out rounds. Scrape together the leftover dough to roll out another base. Bake on a butter paper lined baking tray  at 200 degrees for around 8-10 minutes or till the edges are golden brown. You can store this for up to a week in an airtight container, but always cool completely before bottling. Enjoy!