Naan Kathai

Method: naan kathai

1. Preheat the oven and prepare your trays: Preheat the oven to 170˚ Celsius. If you are not using a non-stick baking tray, grease and line three trays with baking paper.
2. Prepare the butter, ghee and sugar: Place half the butter and half the ghee in a microwave safe bowl and melt it. Then pour into a bowl that you are going to use to mix, along with your sugar and cream for a good 5 minutes. This may feel like a futile step, but it does help to dissolve the sugar a bit. Once this is done, then place the remaining ghee (for best results, it is optimal to use solid ghee as opposed to melted ghee here) and butter with the rest of the creamed mixture and beat for at least 12 to 15 minutes – the mixture must be very pale and light.
3. Prepare your dry ingredients: Place the flour, gramflour, semolina, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and the spice blend into a bowl and give it a good whisk to combine.
4. Add in the dry ingredients: Add the dry ingredients to the creamed butter and ghee mixture in three additions. You can mix this for about a minute until it comes together (unlike shortbread type biscuits, where we try to avoid overmixing to keep a buttery texture, some gluten-development is fine here).
5. Shape and bake: Roll the dough into 20g balls. They do spread a bit in the oven, so they may initially feel smaller than you would expect. If you want, you can do 25g balls as well, but I would not go bigger. Place the biscuits on the tray – I fit 11 on a tray, in a row of 4, 3 and then 4. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes, until the tops begin to crack. Keep a close eye on them – you do not want them to get too brown, and the high spice ratio can make them darken quite quickly.
6. Let rest on the tray before removing: Once out of the oven, let the naan kathai rest on the tray for 10 minutes to firm up. They are too tender to remove by hand. Then, using a spatula, lift the biscuits off the tray and place them on a cooling rack to cool completely.
7. Storage: These biscuits will keep well for up to a week, stored in an airtight container, and ensuring that it is well sealed. I usually wrap the seam between the biscuit barrel and the lid with sellotape to ensure no air gets in.