Jeera Biscuits

These jeera biscuits are the perfect teatime companion. Age-old recipe, classic flavour and it hold a place in many cherished food memories. Sweet and salty balance of buttery biscuits with a perfectly crisp texture makes them exceptionally enjoyable. Comfort teatime snack, which never fails to seduce the taste buds.

These Indian biscuits are the souvenirs from my childhood.  There was a bakery right opposite our house when I was a girl. I have many memories of that place, those huge glass jars kept in a row on the counter, each containing different types of biscuits. Coconut macaroon, jeera biscuits, the once with cashews, Tutti Frutti, chocolate ones, cake rusk, I remember so many. Every morning the bakery had this enchanting aroma of fresh bakes, almost like fairy dust…. The buttery sugary aroma of fairy dust all around.

This recipe of jeera biscuits has half whole wheat flour and half maida, which adds to the hearty deliciousness. But I won’t be tagging the word “healthy” with these cookies, just because some maida is replaced by whole wheat flour. Such misconceptions, mislead our dietary oaths. 

Keep a vigilant eye for the foods which are labelled healthy, if you are trying to follow a diet.

Now these biscuits primally are butter and sugar, so healthy etcetera keywords don’t settle with such bakes. But delicious, delectable, flavoursome and many more keywords have a place with them. Also, I must tell you how easy these are to bake in your home oven. 

Make sure that the ingredients are at room temperature especially butter (make sure its soft, neither brick hard, nor melted). It is so much easier to whisk butter with a hand whisk when it’s soft. You don’t need an electric whisk to the job. 

During the process of creaming the butter and sugar, some air is incorporated and some of the sugar dissolves in the butter’s water phase. This helps leaven the cookies as they bake, giving them some lift. Melting butter before combining it with sugar leads to the squatter, denser cookies.

Make sure to measure the ingredients accurately and don’t forget to preheat the oven at least for 10 minutes. 

The dough needs to be chilled in the fridge before baking. Chilling cookie dough before baking solidifies the fat in the cookies. As the cookies bake, the fat in the chilled cookie dough takes longer to melt. And the longer the fat remains solid, the fewer cookies spread. And as a result, it holds the shape. 

You can add additional jeera at the surface of your jeera cookies. You can shape your jeera biscuits any way that you like.

Place the baking tray in oven and bake for 15- 20 minutes or until the biscuits turn golden brown in colour. Remove from oven, store in an air-tight container and serve when required.